Library Link of the Day

I've subscribed to Library Link for some time now. It usually brings me something interesting, like today from yesterday's Wired blog: Google settles BookScan lawsuit: Everybody Wins! http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/10/google-settles.html
Google has settled the three year old lawsuit for $125 million dollars. They will pay publishers and authors for any books they scan that are currently out of print, but still under copyright. The article notes that these are books that probably never will be reprinted anyway. And they are establishing a non-profit Book Rights Registry to manage the royalties. "Publishers now have the option of activating a Buy Now button for readers to download a copy of the book. Google will take a 37% share of the profits, and the remaining 63% will go to authors and publishers." It goes on to state "Universities and institutions can also buy a subscription service for unlimited viewing of the entire collection, and U.S. public libraries will have terminals for students and researchers to view the catalog for free."

I LOVE the fact that Google worked this out so that everybody wins. Sure, there are going to be quibbles about different issues - but the larger picture is that less information will be lost and the people of the entire world benefit because they can all have ACCESS. It's not often you can make that statement and not sound goofy.