Google Admits More Colleges To Library Program

Google’s been quite active in the educational community in the past few months. The search engine giant has featured videos from UC Berkeley, sealed a deal with Blackboard, and vastly expanded its Google Books Library Project. The potential arrangement with Georgetown University would fit quite nicely with these recent developments. Also, the search function of the college’s site is already “powered by Google.”

Colleen Nicholson of The Hoya investigated rumors of further Google collaborations. For her article, she interviewed Beth Ann Bergsmark, director of University Information Services. “It’s very interesting but we are in the initial stages of investigation right now,” said Bergsmark.

It seems unlikely that any college would turn down Google’s offering. Nicholson noted that “the new e-mail system is free for schools,” and that, “if implemented, the new Gmail program would increase each student’s mail storage capacity to two gigabytes, or 2,000 megabytes, up from the current GUMail quota of 20 megabytes.”

Some people still have reservations, however. “We have not fully weighed all of the considerations,” said Alexa Kim, executive director of technology services at George Washington University, which is considering a similar switch. “The main concern would be security and privacy,” Kim told Nicholson.

Google tends to earn high marks in those areas, though, so students at both Georgetown University and George Washington University may soon be looking at e-mail systems run by the search engine company.

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The company says that the UW-Madison/WHS historical document and book collection, at 7.2 million holdings, is one of the largest collections in the United States, ranked 11th in North America.

The university adds its resources to an impressive list of other project partners that includes the University of California, University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, the New York Public Library, Oxford University and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

“Wisconsin is in a position to take a leading role in making the primary documents of U. S. government history freely accessible on the Internet for anyone to find and use,” says UW-Madison Provost Patrick Farrell.

For books protected by copyright, users just get basic background (such as the book’s title and the author’s name), at most a few lines of text related to their search, and information about where they can buy or borrow a book. If publishers or authors don’t want to have their books digitized, they will be excluded.

Google, run by a team steeped in academia, has been very proactive in promoting educational causes as part of its overall strategy. The company also recently launched Google Apps for Education, introducing applications for communication, collaboration and search for educational institutions.

The applications will be previewed the Educause tradeshow in Dallas, Texas. The company also plans to release a set of beta APIs for organizations that want integrate directories, single-sign-on systems, and mail gateways with Google Apps for Education. Arizona State University has already integrated the APIs into their system.

In this flurry of educational announcements, Google Enterprise also revealed that Blackboard will be the first Google Enterprise Professional partner to focus primarily on the education market. Blackboard will focus on helping schools integrate Google enterprise search technology for schools, as well as integrating the Blackboard Learning System with Google Scholar.

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Blackboard is a well-known name in the educational community – the company describes itself as “a leading provider of enterprise technology to the education industry.” In keeping with its mission, then, a Blackboard press release proudly revealed that the company has “joined the Google Enterprise Professional program, becoming the first member of the program to focus primarily on educational institutions.”

“As a Google partner,” the release continued, “Blackboard is launching a series of efforts to enhance search capabilities for students and faculty at thousands of academic institutions around the globe . . . . An exciting outcome of the partnership is the integration of the Blackboard Learning System and Google Scholar . . . . Blackboard will also offer a set of Google OneBox for Enterprise modules through a Blackboard Building Block for Google OneBox.”

Michael Chasen, president and CEO of Blackboard, spoke about the Google partnership. It “provides a tremendous value to people across the campus community,” he said.

Similarly, the SAP deal “offers clients even greater return on investment from the technologies they rely on every day,” according to Chasen (in the second press release). It should also “equip campus leaders with the ability to better track and manage student and institutional data and outcomes.”

With these new partnerships, the CEO probably doesn’t have to worry about his company becoming outdated anytime soon. Blackboard Inc., unlike its namesake, should have a strong presence for some time to come.

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There are two posts so far, and at least I’m enjoying Google’s translation:

If the person which Google most cares about in this world is who, that is our user. Why is this we – clears the Google China blackboard newspaper in today – sweetheart festival the reason. We care about you, hopes and you together shares oneself.

Why is called the blackboard newspaper? Because we hope here becomes the ordinary Google staff (is called googler) with the user share intravenous drip, freely spreads the picture the small field, likes behind our childhood classroom the blackboard newspaper same. We are making whatever, what new matter did the company have, our new idea, new creativity

Is a blog a “blackboard newspaper”? I kind of like the analogy. I think I’ll call my next blog that. And what is this intravenous drip? SEW says the posts are about Valentine’s Day.

(via Philipp)

Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.