MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (06/06/2007) —Does the Agreement include both public domain and in copyright works?
Yes. The digitization initiative will include both public domain and in-copyright materials in a manner consistent with copyright law. For books in the public domain, readers will be able to read, download and print the full texts from the Google site. In addition, the consortium will build a shared digital repository for all 12 universities digitized public domain materials so the holdings can be collectively archived and made available to faculty, students and the broader public. For books protected by copyright, users will 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 do not want to have their books digitized, Google will exclude them. What materials are in the public domain? For users in the United States, the Google Books Library project treats all books published after 1923 as protected by copyright, except for book
