Google Book Settlement!

Google books has just settled the lawsuit brought by authors and publishers alleging that the scanning of copyrighted books violates copyright law. The settlement leaves the legal question unresolved but could make a big impact for libraries. Read about it here (Google). Or here (NY Times).

According to the settlement out of print books still protected by copyright will be available for purchase from Google. Libraries will be able to pay a subscription fee to access all of the out of print books. Publishers will have the option to sell books still in print through Google.

This means libraries could pay to have electronic access to (probably) millions of books all at once. I have not seen what this will cost. It will be really interesting to see how this changes libraries as we know them.

h/t to John Jaeger