Toward a Go-To Gershwin Edition; New York Times, 9/13/13

Larry Rohter, New York Times; Toward a Go-To Gershwin Edition: "Is it to-may-to or to-mah-to? That question may be unanswerable, but an agreement between the estates of George and Ira Gershwin and the University of Michigan, to be announced on Sunday, aims to create the first definitive edition of the Gershwins’ entire joint body of work, including such landmark pieces as “Rhapsody in Blue,” “Porgy and Bess” and “An American in Paris.” The project, which is expected to require several decades of note-by-note and word-by-word analysis, will allow University of Michigan scholars unrestricted access to Gershwin scores, letters and compositional drafts, which are at the Library of Congress and will remain there. From that material, at least 35 volumes are to emerge, in both book and electronic form, with the goal of cementing the Gershwins’ reputation as uniquely American geniuses and providing a reliable road map for future performances... Marc Gershwin, a nephew of George Gershwin who administers his copyrights, said the need for an authoritative critical edition had become increasingly obvious to the heirs in recent years."

Authors Guild Sues HathiTrust and 5 Universities Over Digitized Books; Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/12/11

Chronicle of Higher Education; Authors Guild Sues HathiTrust and 5 Universities Over Digitized Books:

"The Authors Guild, the Australian Society of Authors, a Canadian writers’ union, and eight individual authors are suing HathiTrust and five universities for copyright infringement, the guild announced on Monday afternoon."

U. of Michigan Copyright Sleuths Start New Project to Investigate Orphan Works; Chronicle of Higher Education, 5/16/11

Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education; U. of Michigan Copyright Sleuths Start New Project to Investigate Orphan Works:

"The University of Michigan on Monday announced a new project to identify orphan works among the millions of volumes in the HathiTrust Digital Library...

The 8.7-million-volume HathiTrust collection, pooled by a consortium of research libraries largely from scans made by Google, may contain in the neighborhood of 2.5 million orphan works, according to one recent estimate."

'U' teams with Amazon to make 400,000 rare books available; Michigan Daily, 7/21/09

AP via Michigan Daily; 'U' teams with Amazon to make 400,000 rare books available:

"The University of Michigan said Tuesday it is teaming up with Amazon.com Inc. to offer reprints of 400,000 rare, out-of-print and out-of-copyright books from its library. Seattle-based Amazon's BookSurge unit will print the books on demand in soft cover editions at prices from $10 to $45...

The books in the Michigan-Amazon deal do not have copyright protection and are in the public domain, so no royalty payments go to the author or original publisher...

"Public and university libraries are seeing the benefits of print-on-demand as an economic and environmentally conscious way to support their missions of preserving and making rare or out-of-copyright material broadly available to the public," [BookSurge spokeswoman Amanda] Wilson said.

University of Michigan libraries Dean Paul Courant said the arrangement means "books unavailable for a century or more will be able to go back into print, one copy at a time.""

http://www.michigandaily.com/content/2009-07-20/u-teams-amazon-make-400000-rare-books-available

U. of Wisconsin, U. of Texas Expand Their Agreements With Google; Chronicle of Higher Education, The Wired Campus, 7/9/09

Chronicle of Higher Education, The Wired Campus; U. of Wisconsin, U. of Texas Expand Their Agreements With Google:

"The University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Texas at Austin, two longtime participants in Google’s massive book-digitizing project, announced today that they have expanded their agreements with the company. The new deals strengthen the alliance between two big university systems and Google’s Book Search program at a time when it is drawing scrutiny from librarians and federal regulators, among others."

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3875

UMich Gets Better Deal in Google’s Library of the Future Project; Wired.com, 5/21/09

Ryan Singel via Wired.com; UMich Gets Better Deal in Google’s Library of the Future Project:

"The new Google-UM agreement (.pdf) gives the university a digital copy of every book on its shelves, regardless of whether Google scanned its copy or another library’s. The school gets more rights to distribute its copies of the digitized works, and, most importantly for Google public relations, a way for the school to protest the pricing scheme of full-text institutional subscriptions to the millions of digitized books.

University of Michigan is one of the largest of the 29 libraries who have been digitizing public-domain and in-copyright books in conjunction with Google Book Search."

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/05/umich-gets-better-deal-in-googles-library-of-the-future-project/

The Evolving Google Library; InsideHigherEd.com, 5/21/09

Via InsideHigherEd.com; The Evolving Google Library:

"Here's how the system would work:

Universities that have made parts of their collections available for digitization will receive deep discounts on access to the collection, or -- in Michigan's case and perhaps those of others -- will pay nothing for access to the collection, which currently has about 10 million volumes and could easily double in size. Every participating library will have full free access to digitized copies of all of the books it contributed.

For people at other institutions, a free "preview" of a book -- with about 20 percent of content -- will be available online.

Individuals will be able to purchase full access (but not download a copy) at prices that Google said would be inexpensive compared to regular purchase prices.

Colleges and university libraries could buy site licenses, with pricing based on Carnegie classification. While no scale was released, Google officials said that the goal of pricing would be both to provide appropriate recognition to copyright holders but also to ensure wide access to the collections.

Any of the universities that have provided volumes for the project will have the right to seek arbitration if they feel that the pricing does not reflect both of those principles.

Michigan was the first university to sign this expanded agreement although others among the 30-plus having books digitized are expected to follow, so the resulting offering will contain all of their collections combined...

One of the groups that has been worrying about pricing is the American Library Association. Corey Williams, associate director of the association's Washington office, said in an interview Wednesday that while many details remain unclear, the Google-Michigan agreement is "a step in the right direction with regard to pricing."...

Steven Bell, associate university librarian for research and instructional services at Temple University, said he thinks Google is trying to respond to the complaints that have been raised, and that he doesn't think the Michigan announcement will make those issues go away.

"I don't think this new agreement with the University of Michigan is going to totally mitigate the concerns of the library community about Google's monopoly ownership of these millions of digitized books."

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/05/21/google

Google Book-Scanning Pact to Give Libraries Input on Price; New York Times, 5/20/9

Miguel Helft via New York Times; Google Book-Scanning Pact to Give Libraries Input on Price:

"The new agreement, which Google hopes other libraries will endorse, lets the University of Michigan object if it thinks the prices Google charges libraries for access to its digital collection are too high, a major concern of some librarians. Any pricing dispute would be resolved through arbitration.

Only the institutions that lend books to Google for scanning — now 21 libraries in the United States — would be allowed to object to pricing.

The new agreement also gives the university, and any library that signs a similar agreement, a discount on its subscription proportional to the number of books it contributes to Google’s mass digitization project. Since Michigan is lending a large number of books, it will receive Google’s service free for 25 years...

The new agreement does not address other criticism, including the complaints over orphan works and worries that the agreement does not protect the privacy of readers of Google’s digital library."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/technology/companies/21google.html?hpw