Google to digitize Ohio State University Libraries collections

The Ohio State University will join the other universities in the Big Ten plus the University of Chicago in a collaborative effort to digitize the most distinctive collections in their libraries and make them discoverable on Google. The university will offer up to one million publications – including collections in such areas as psychology, education, linguistics and American literature – to Google which will be scanned as part of the Google Book Search Project.

Ohio State's contribution furthers the efforts of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), an alliance of these Midwestern research universities working to consolidate holdings from their largest and most distinguished libraries in a massive one-of-a-kind digital resource. Collectively, the CIC libraries with Google's help plan to digitize up to 10 million volumes.

"The digitization of the CIC library holdings will provide an unprecedented resource for learners and researchers everywhere," said Ohio State University Provost Barbara Snyder. "By making their 10 million volumes available online, the CIC institutions are allowing ideas and references to become more discoverable and searchable and this broader access will, at the same time, preserve and stabilize the legacy of their collections."

Scanning of Ohio State's collections will begin this summer and indexing will be made available through Google. OSU officials believe the submission of these collections will result in a tremendous resource for students and researchers worldwide.

The digitization initiative will include both public domain and in copyright materials in a manner consistent with copyright law. Google will make available brief "snippets" of in-copyright materials through its search engine, directing viewers to avenues for library lending or purchase. Public domain materials can be viewed, searched or downloaded for printing in their entirety from the Google site.

Google will provide the CIC with a digital copy of all public domain materials.

As a part of the agreement, the consortium also will create a first-of-its-kind shared digital repository to collectively archive and manage the full content of as many as 5 million public domain works held across the CIC libraries.

"The Ohio State University Libraries are very pleased to become a part of the international effort with Google to digitize the world's collection of important print books and journals," said Joseph Branin, director of the OSU Libraries. "Through this effort print material will become much easier to discover, find, and use."

"This project demonstrates how new information technology can be used to help share and preserve the record of history and culture contained in our University libraries and in those of the other CIC and partner libraries," he said.

The CIC is a consortium of 12 research universities, including The Ohio State University, the other 10 members of the Big Ten and the University of Chicago. With campuses in eight states, CIC universities enroll more than 300,000 undergraduates and 76,000 graduate students, and employ some 33,000 full-time faculty and 139,000 full-time staff. The CIC is guided by the provosts of the member universities.

A news release issued by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation can be found at www.cic.uiuc.edu