University of California Joins Google Library Project

The University of California is joining Google’s book-scanning project, throwing the weight of another 100 academic libraries behind an ambitious venture that’s under legal attack for alleged copyright infringement.

The deal covers all the libraries in UC’s 10-campus system, marking the biggest expansion of Google’s effort to convert millions of library books into digital form since a group of authors and publishers sued last fall to derail a project launched 20 months ago.

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UC joins three other major U.S. universities - Stanford, Michigan and Harvard.

Publisher’s as usual are not happy. I think they need to realize that it is very hard, if not impossible, to contain information in digital age. We, bloggers, also publish information everyday which are widely available to everyone around the world and searchable by all search engines. We have learned to leverage the wide distribution of knowledge, rather than restrict it. Why not the publishers?