Some of Google’s library partners have been so receptive of Google’s project that they’re building their own version on the side. They recognize the potential importance of digitizing books and have started their own database called HathiTrust, and will pull from additional research sources. It’s all library-based and will not be dependent on the corporate future of a company like Google.

Not that Google’s too worried about their future, or even their future with Book Search. It got off to a rocky start, but seems to be sailing much more smoothly these days. Apart from the growing number of content partners Google is building up, there is a possibility that they may be close to settling a three-year-old lawsuit regarding the project, according to Matt McGee at Search Engine Land. He writes:

In the legal case, five publishers sued to stop Google from scanning the entire content of books that are still under copyright protection. Google has said that only a small portion of the scanned books are made available through Google Book Search, so the program constitutes “fair use.” They also say publishers can opt out of the program.

Rumors in the past week are that negotiations have “heated up” and a settlement is “imminent.” Spokespersons for both Google and the Association of American Publishers dismissed the speculation.

Either way, Google is continuing down the path of organizing the world’s information and this includes books (not to mention old newspapers), and one can’t help but consider a possible future where books being read electronically (and socially for that matter) becomes the norm, with more and more becoming available online and devices like the Kindle being offered (although such a device is apparently not in the cards anytime soon for Google). I’m not saying it’s the near future, or even that it is the future, but it’s a possibility isn’t it?

It makes sense to some extent though. This is the library we’re talking about. Library information shouldn’t have to rely on a corporation, and the group seems to have nothing but respect for Google. They’re just trying to cover their bases. Backup is never a bad thing.

"Google is an excellent partner,” Bits quotes Paul Courant, university librarian and dean of libraries at the University of Michigan. "They are a corporation with a responsibility to its stockholders. Google could last 50 years, 100 years, 1000 years. We are academic institutions with a commitment to the preservation and use of scholarship and the scholarship record for the indefinite future."

Besides, they’re going to have things that Google doesn’t as well. Materials digitized through other means will also be made available through HathiTrust, they said in a press release. So far HathiTrust contains 2 million volumes and approximately 3/4 of a billion pages, about 16 percent of which are in the public domain. You can’t view this stuff yet though. A blurb on the HathiTrust site goes:

Where’s the search interface to all of the content in HathiTrust? There is currently no single global interface to the body of content in HathiTrust repository.

Be assured we are working with our partners to accomplish this—a way that takes into account the large number of different sources of metadata and the different strategies each of the partners has for managing that information.

I assume Google is one of these partners, but to be clear, this project is separate from Google. That’s the whole point, so it will be interesting to see if Google ends up providing the search technology for the database. While there are 25 libraries participating in the project so far, they are hoping to get the rest of those involved with the Google Books Library Project on board as well. Current partners are as follows: