Is Google Books subscribable to librarians?

Is Google Books subscribable to libraries, just like link.springer.com to libraries?

Google Books have a large collection of scanned ebooks. Thanks!

Tim

• ebooks

Comments

• jonsca: Can you clarify what you mean by "subscribable"? Do you want it to send new content? Do you want to access the full text of all of the books for your library?
• Tim: @jonsca: I mean the latter.
• jonsca: Ah okay. Good question, I think. I would imagine it would be costly! Could you add a clarification to the question with the full text bit, then?

Answer by Mary Jo Finch

No. That may have been the original intent, but it has been waylaid by a series of court cases. When Google started scanning all those books, authors cried foul. Google settled for \$125 million, and there was a deal where authors could opt out of having their books included. Another court intervened, suggesting that "opt in" would be more appropriate and allowing a class action lawsuit to go forward. An appeals court has since said that Google can challenge the legality of the class action lawsuit. So that is where we are at.

At this point, though, many of the book are searchable, so at least researchers can identify appropriate resources for their studies, and this is a fabulous resource for librarians.

Comments

• Joe: They don't even offer those that are well within the public domain? blah.