Standford University Extends Its Partnership with Google Books

Google Books has some serious opposers, some motivated by their beliefs, misguided or not, and others by their wallets. Still, even as the project is attacked by many, it's good to know that at least some organizations understand its importance and the value it can bring. Thankfully, one of those organizations, Stanford University, is in a privileged position to help Google Books. The two parties are now announcing that they are extending their original partnership to allow Google access to the millions of titles the Stanford Library hold. The University also reiterated its support for the revised settlement with authors and publishers which is set for a final court hearing later this month.

"Today, Stanford University announced that it has expanded our original partnership to take advantage of our settlement agreement to make millions of works from its library collection accessible to readers, researchers, and book lovers across the United States," Tamar Fruchtman, senior corporate counsel at Google announced.

"That means that if the settlement agreement is approved by the court, anyone in the US will be able to find, preview and buy online access to books from Stanford's library. Stanford joins the University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Texas, who also expanded their original partnerships with Google."

To date, 1.7 million books housed by the Stanford Library have been digitized and the plan is to have several more millions scanned in the future. The university is one of Google's originals partners and has been around since 2004 when it signed the initial partnership deal with the search giant. It was one of the first five partners as Google expanded its Print program, which would later become Google Books.

Stanford University says fully supports the latest iteration of the settlement deal. It believes that Google's program is an opportunity to open up the world's collective knowledge to a much wider audience giving many people the chance to read books they may not otherwise have access to, the so-called out-of-print, orphaned books.