Pamela Samuelson has self-archived "Google Book Search and the Future of Books in Cyberspace" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

The Google Book Search (GBS) initiative once promised to test the bounds of fair use, as the company started scanning millions of in-copyright books from the collections of major research libraries. The initial goal of this scanning was to make indexes of the books’ contents and to provide short snippets of book contents in response to pertinent search queries. The Authors Guild and five trade publishers sued Google in the fall of 2005 charging that this scanning activity was copyright infringement. Google defended by claiming fair use. Rather than litigating this important issue, however, the parties devised a radical plan to restructure the market for digital books, which was announced on October 28, 2008, by means of a class action settlement of the lawsuits. Approval of this settlement would give Google—and Google alone—a license to commercialize all out-of-print books and to make up to 20 per cent of their contents available in response to search queries (unless rights holders expressly forbade this).

This article discusses the glowingly optimistic predictions about the future of books in cyberspace promulgated by proponents of the GBS settlement and contrasts them with six categories of serious reservations that have emerged about the settlement. These more pessimistic views of GBS are reflected in the hundreds objections and numerous amicus curiae briefs filed with the court responsible for determining whether to approve the settlement. GBS poses risks for publishers, academic authors and libraries, professional writers, and readers as well as for competition and innovation in several markets and for the cultural ecology of knowledge. Serious concerns have also been expressed about the GBS settlement as an abuse of the class action process because it usurps legislative prerogatives. The article considers what might happen to the future of books in cyberspace if the GBS deal is not approved and recommends that regardless of whether the GBS settlement is approved, a consortium of research libraries ought to develop a digital database of books from their collections that would enhance access to books without posing the many risks to the public interest that the GBS deal has created

The National Library of the Netherlands has released its Strategic Plan 2010-2013.

In the "Strategic priority 1" section (page 6), the document states that the library intends to ultimately "digitise all Dutch books, newspapers and periodicals from 1470." By 2013, it states that: “10% of all Dutch books, newspapers and periodicals have been digitised (60 million pages by the KB, 13 million by third parties).” (Thanks to ResourceShelf.)

Here's an excerpt:

One of the large, labour-intensive challenges is to digitise all the books, periodicals and newspapers that have appeared in the Netherlands. A component of this undertaking is the digitisation of the special pre-1800 collections for which a number of Dutch university libraries and the KB have together drawn up a project plan. In addition, the KB has collected since 1995 born digital publications (publications which are only published in digital form, such as websites, digital periodicals, e-books, etc.). The KB will intensify this undertaking. The KB aims to be able to offer customers all publications with as few restrictions as possible. Naturally the KB does this in close consultation with publishers and right holder organisations.

The Public-Interest Book Search Initiative at the New York Law School has released Objections to the Google Books Settlement and Responses in the Amended Settlement: A Report.

Here's an excerpt:

This report collects information about the objections raised to the original proposed settlement in the Authors Guild v. Google litigation. We identified 76 distinct issues, which we grouped into 11 categories. This report briefly summarizes each issue, provides an illustrative quotation from a filing with the court, and indicates any related changes in the amended settlement. . . .

This report is descriptive, not evaluative. Inclusion of an issue means only that at least one party made the full argument in a filing to the court. It does not represent any judgment about whether the objection accurately characterizes the settlement or the underlying facts. Nor does it represent any judgment about the legal merits of the objection. Our classification and ordering of the objections are meant as an aid to the reader, not substantive commentary. Our choice of representative quotations is not meant as an endorsement of any particular filer’s arguments. Similarly, inclusion of changes from the amended settlement does not represent a judgment about whether the changes address the relevant objection.

JISC has announced that eight projects have been awarded Digging into Data Challenge grants.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"Data mining and analysis are not just for scientists" is the message coming strongly out of an international JISC-funded competition, the "Digging into Data Challenge."

Entrants have been challenged to answer the question "what would you do with a million books? Or a million pages of newspapers? Or a million photographs of artworks?" That is, how can analysis done over immense quantities of digital data be employed in humanities and social science research? What would you do with a million books? Or a million pages of newspapers? Or a million photographs of artworks?

Eight international research teams from the UK, US and Canada will be using a variety of data analysis tools to demonstrate that techniques currently used in the sciences can leverage open, new avenues for scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.

The winners of the competition are announced today by the four leading research agencies sponsoring the competition: JISC, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), both of the United States.

Investment from the four agencies together amounts to over a million pounds, allowing new links to be forged across the different countries, as well as breaking down disciplinary boundaries.

Here are the funded projects

• Data Mining with Criminal Intent: George Mason University, University of Alberta, and University of Hertfordshire
• Digging into Image Data to Answer Authorship Related Questions: Michigan State University, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and University of Sheffield
• Digging into the Enlightenment: Mapping the Republic of Letters: University of Oklahoma, University of Oxford, and Stanford University
• Harvesting Speech Datasets for Linguistic Research on the Web: McGill University and Cornell University
• Mining a Year of Speech: University of Oxford and University of Pennsylvania
• Railroads and the Making of Modern America—Tools for Spatio-Temporal Correlation, Analysis, and Visualization: University of Portsmouth and University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• Structural Analysis of Large Amounts of Music Information: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, University of Southampton, and McGill University
• Towards Dynamic Variorum Editions: Mount Allison University, Imperial College, London, and Tufts University

The American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries have released A Guide for the Perplexed Part III: The Amended Settlement Agreement.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The guide describes the major changes in the amended settlement agreement (ASA), submitted to the Court by Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers on November 13, 2009, with emphasis on those changes relevant to libraries.

While many of the amendments will have little direct impact on libraries, the ASA significantly reduces the scope of the settlement because it excludes most books published outside of the United States. In addition, the ASA provides the Book Rights Registry the authority to increase the number of free public access terminals in public libraries that had initially been set at one per library building, among other changes.

Looking ahead, the Court has accepted the parties’ recommended schedule and set January 28, 2010, as the deadline for class members to opt out of the ASA or to file objections, and February 4, 2010, as the deadline for the Department of Justice to file its comments. The Court will hold the fairness hearing on February 18, 2010.

The UCLA Library has made The Google Books Settlement: Issues and Options, a digital video featuring copyright expert Jonathan Band, available on YouTube.

US District Court Judge Denny Chin has granted preliminary approval of the amended Google Book Search Settlement.

Here's the order.

Read more about it at "Judge Gives Preliminary Approval to Google Deal, Sets Feb. 18 for Final Hearing" and "Judge Sets February Hearing for New Google Books Deal."

An amended version of the Google Book Search Settlement has been filed by the AAP, the Authors Guild, and Google with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The complete amended agreement is available from Google as a Zip file.

Exhibit 1 provides the primary text of the amended settlement agreement.

An overview of the amended settlement agreement is available, as is an FAQ.

Read more about it at "Google Books Settlement Sets Geographic, Business Limits"; "Is the Google Books Settlement Worth the Wait?"; and "Terms of Digital Book Deal with Google Revised."

In "Possible Text Mining Opportunity at Stanford," Matthew Jockers describes a research proposal being developed at Stanford University for a text mining center that would provide access to 30 million digitized books plus Highwire Journals.

Here's an excerpt:

As I'm sure many of you already know, Stanford has been closely involved with Google's book scanning project, and we (Stanford) are currently preparing a proposal for the creation of a text mining / analysis Center on campus. The core assets of the proposed Center would include all of the Google data (approx. 30 million books) plus all of our Highwire data and all of our licensed content. We see a wide range of research opportunities for this collection, and we are envisioning a Center that would offer various levels of interaction with scholars. In particular we envision a "tiered" service model that would, on one hand, allow technically challenged researchers to work with Center staff in formulating research questions and, on the other, an opportunity for more technically advanced scholars to write their own algorithms and run them on the corpus. We are imagining the Center as both a resource and as a physical place, a place that will offer support to both internal and external scholars and graduate students.

The Internet Archive has made 1.6 million digitized e-books freely available to children who have laptops from the One Laptop Per Child Foundation.

Read more about it at "Internet Archive Opens 1.6 Million E-Books to Kids with OLPC Laptops."

Next month, the HathiTrust will release a full-text search engine indexing 1.5 billion pages from digitized books and other materials from 25 member research libraries.

An experimental version of the search engine is now available.

Read more about it at "HathiTrust Launching Full-Text Library of Books."

The University of Michigan Library will distribute over 500,000 rare and hard-to-find digitized books using HP BookPrep POD service.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

HP BookPrep — a cloud computing service that enables on-demand printing of books — brings new life to the traditional publishing model, making it possible to bring any book ever published back into print through an economical and sustainable service model.

As part of a growing movement to preserve and digitize historic content, major libraries are partnering with technology leaders to scan previously hard-to-find works using high-resolution photography. HP's process transforms these scans prior to printing by cleaning up some of the wear and tear that often is present in the originals.

HP BookPrep significantly drives down the cost of republishing books by eliminating the manual cleanup work that would otherwise be required. Based on imaging and printing technology from HP Labs, the company's central research arm, HP BookPrep automates the creation of high-quality, print-ready books from these raw book scans by sharpening text and images, improving alignment and coloration, and generating and adding covers.

People can now purchase high-quality print versions of public-domain, out-of-print books from the University of Michigan Library through HP BookPrep channels, including traditional and online retailers such as Amazon.com.

"People around the world still value reading books in print," said Andrew Bolwell, director, New Business Initiatives, HP. "HP BookPrep technology allows publishers to extend the life cycle of their books, removes the cost and waste burdens of maintaining inventory, and uses a full spectrum of technologies to deliver convenient access to consumers."

For publishers and content owners, HP BookPrep offers an opportunity to offer their full catalog of titles online, irrespective of demand. Because HP BookPrep is a web service that processes books as they are ordered, there is little upfront investment or risk as books are printed only after they are purchased, no matter the volume, eliminating the need for high carrying costs.

Consistently ranked as one of the top 10 academic research libraries in North America, the University of Michigan Library is a true repository for the human record. The print collection contains more than 7 million volumes, covering thousands of years of civilization. HP is collaborating with the university to eliminate barriers and increase access to content as part of an ongoing effort to make the concept of "out of print" a thing of the past.

"Our partnership with HP is a testament to the University of Michigan Library's commitment to increase public access to our library's collections and our continued innovative use of digitization," said Paul N. Courant, librarian and dean of libraries, University of Michigan. "We are excited that HP BookPrep can offer print distribution of the public domain works in our collection and help to provide broad access to works that have previously been hard to find outside the walls of our library."

The collaboration also builds upon HP's existing relationship with Applewood Books, a publisher of historical, Americana books. The company, which has been using HP BookPrep for the last year to republish hundreds of titles, also will distribute HP BookPrep's best-selling titles from the University of Michigan Library.