Important Announcement from the Harvard Libraries

[Liblicense-L Listowner <liblicen@pantheon.yale.edu>]

Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 19:05:04 -0500 (EST)
From: Sidney Verba <administration@rockhop.harvard.edu>
Subject: An Important Announcement from the Harvard Libraries

December 13, 2004
_________

Project Description:

Harvard's Pilot Project with Google

Harvard University is embarking on a collaboration with Google that could
harness Google's search technology to provide to both the Harvard
community and the larger public a revolutionary new information location
tool to find materials available in libraries. In the coming months,
Google will collaborate with Harvard's libraries on a pilot project to
digitize a substantial number of the 15 million volumes held in the
University's extensive library system. Google will provide online access
to the full text of those works that are in the public domain. In related
agreements, Google will launch similar projects with Oxford, Stanford, the
University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library. As of 9 am on
December 14, an FAQ detailing the Harvard pilot program with Google will
be available at http://hul.harvard.edu.

The Harvard pilot will provide the information and experience on which the
University can base a decision to launch a large-scale digitization
program. Any such decision will reflect the fact that Harvard's library
holdings are among the University's core assets, that the magnitude of
those holdings is unique among university libraries anywhere in the world,
and that the stewardship of these holdings is of paramount importance. If
the pilot is deemed successful, Harvard will explore a long-term program
with Google through which the vast majority of the University's library
books would be digitized and included in Google's searchable database.
Google will bear the direct costs of digitization in the pilot project.

By combining the skills and library collections of Harvard University with
the innovative search skills and capacity of Google, a long-term program
has the potential to create an important public good. According to Harvard
President Lawrence H. Summers, "Harvard has the greatest university
library in the world. If this experiment is successful, we have the
potential to provide the world's greatest system for dissemination as
well."

In addition, there would be special benefits to the Harvard community.
Plans call for the eventual development of a link allowing Google users at
Harvard to connect directly to the online HOLLIS (Harvard Online Library
Information System) catalog (http://holliscatalog.harvard.edu) for
information on the location and availability at Harvard of works
identified through a Google search. This would merge the search capacity
of the Internet with the deep research collections at Harvard into one
seamless resource-a development especially important for undergraduates
who often see the library and the Internet as alternative and perhaps
rival sources of information.

Eventually, Harvard users would benefit from far better access to the 5
million books located at the Harvard Depository (HD). If the University
undertakes the long-term program, Harvard users would gain online access
to the full text of out-of-copyright books stored at HD. For books still
in copyright, Harvard users could gain the ability to search for small
snippets of text and, possibly, to view tables of contents. In short, the
Harvard student or faculty member would gain some of the advantages of
browsing that remote storage of books at HD cannot currently provide.

According to Sidney Verba, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and
Director of the University Library, "The possibility of a large-scale
digitization of Harvard's library books does not in any way diminish the
University's commitment to the collection and preservation of books as
physical objects. The digital copy will not be a substitute for the books
themselves. We will continue actively to acquire materials in all formats
and we will continue to conserve them. In fact, as part of the pilot we
are developing criteria for identifying books that are too fragile for
digitizing and for selecting them out of the project.

"It is clear," Verba continued, "that the new century presents
unparalleled challenges and opportunities to Harvard's libraries. Our
pilot program with Google can prove to be a vital and revealing first step
in a lengthy and rewarding process that will benefit generations of
scholars and others."

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