University In Spain Joins Google Book Search

The Complutense University of Madrid has joined Google’s controversial Book Search project, making it the first institution from a non-English-speaking country to take part. The university maintains the second-largest library in Spain, with 3 million volumes; only the National Library is larger. In addition to books in Spanish, the library also houses texts in French, German, Latin, Italian, and English. A spokesperson from Google said the deal with Complutense University “will be a huge boost to our Spanish-language content, as well as other languages.” Publishers and copyright holders have objected to the project, whose goal is to digitize millions of texts and make them available online. Google maintains the project is for the public good; publishers say that even if full texts are not available online for protected works, Google is nonetheless violating their rights by scanning those books.

CNET, 26 September 2006