Jake in a separate email I just put you in touch with Robert McDonald from the HathiTrust
research center who may be able to carry the conversation forward.
And I’d be remiss in not mentioning that libraries hold these books, and you too can see
the books – if not online than in person. You can start by looking in WorldCat to see if
the book is widely held. Many public libraries will do an interlibrary loan request for
you – so you can get the book. You could even ask the library if it’s possible for them to
acquire the book. Libraries are allied with Wikipedia – we want to make closed resources
open and that’s why libraries have books – so that YOU can get them when you need them.
Merrilee Proffitt, Senior Program Officer
OCLC Research
From: wikipedia-library-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-library-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Alex Stinson
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2015 9:48 AM
To: Mailing list for the Wikipedia Library project
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia Library] Google Books
Hi Anders and Jake,
I was in a conversation with someone recently, who recommended that we talk to Haithi
Trust about using their platform (because they have a little more leeway on how they give
permission to use of their digital items). I am wondering who we should be reaching out to
in their community (or if we should shoot for institutional partnership through one of the
university partners
http://www.hathitrust.org/community). I haven't followed up on it,
because I didn't have a concrete proposal in mind: but its definitely something to
look into during the next few months (something along the lines of Wikipedia Visiting
Scholars).
It looks like their standard partnership aggreement requires institutional sign in via
Shibboleth (
http://www.hathitrust.org/eligibility_agreements) which is a feature that we
have talked about a little, but haven't made progress on actualizing it.
Cheers,
Alex
On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 11:41 AM, Jake Orlowitz
<jorlowitz@gmail.com<mailto:jorlowitz@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Anders,
Thanks for you suggestion. I can assure you that [increased] Google Books access has been
our dream from the start. It's very complicated because of the contentious legal
situation that surrounded the massive scanning and limited sharing Google has been doing.
Because of that, we haven't prioritized increased access, however we haven't given
up on the possibility of it one day happening. One thing that would be helpful is a
personal contact with someone at Google who works on the Books program. If you know of
any Google-connected Wikipedians, please put us in touch.
Jake Orlowitz
Lead, The Wikipedia Library
User:Ocaasi
On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 6:31 AM Anders Feder
<anders.feder.83@gmail.com<mailto:anders.feder.83@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi,
I have a little idea that could be really helpful for Wikipedians if it could be
implemented. Google has scanned in a vast collection of
books<http://www.google.com/googlebooks/library/>y/>. Some of these scanned pages can
be read online via Google Books, and serves an important resource for Wikipedians
confirming the verifiability of text added to Wikipedia. However, many of the scanned
pages can not be read: in some cases only an arbitrary selection of pages in a given book
can be read, which may not be the ones need; in other cases, pages can not be read at all
or they can only be searched in the severely limited "Snippet View".
Now, there are good reasons why this is the case. The books copyrighted, and the
rightsholders do not want to give their most important goods away for free to anyone on
the internet. However, given Google's support for Wikipedia, and for the open
dissemination of knowledge, could Wikipedia Library perhaps approach Google and request a
much more limited arrangement, like the ones it has with various journals?
Full access to all books in the Google Books Library Project would be utopic. But even a
limited deal where a short range of pages can be requested for each book would be
extremely helpful, because page numbers are specified countless references on Wikipedia
via the {{cite book}} template - we just do not have a way to easily get those pages.
Yet.
Thank you,
Anders Feder
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