Just let Google give us the books already!

ZDNet Government's Richard Koman declared Google's foray into orphan books to be "all but dead." A deeper look into features in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, however, show us what we really stand to lose in education

Not too long ago, I wrote about Google's potential to really change the ebook market for schools. For some time now, Google has been scanning and digitizing books at universities, but is now embroiled in a legal battle over so-called orphan books:

The Justice Department began its inquiry into the sweeping $125 million settlement this year after various parties complained that it would give Google exclusive rights to profit from millions of orphan books. Orphans are books still protected by copyrights, but that are out of print and whose authors or rights holders are unknown or cannot be found.

Here's my problem with all of the legal wrangling, though. Google has the money, technical expertise, hardware, software, and wherewithal to make a whole lot of books available in digital formats. These are books that have a lot of value academically and, quite frankly, a whole lot more value in digital form. If Google wants to monetize these efforts, fine; the company has demonstrated over and over that it will make resources available for free or very low cost to academic institutions.

Has anyone else stepped forward to digitize 100 million books? The answer is no, in case anyone was wondering. Does that mean that they'll have a monopoly? Yes, it probably does. As an academic, though, I have to ask, who cares? I'd rather have them controlled by a monopoly than disintegrating in a single library somewhere or controlled by 10 different companies, each with different standards and no interoperability.

Don't tie this up in litigation, folks. Scan 'em, post 'em, sell 'em. I don't notice the National Archives or the Library of Congress stepping up to the plate in an effort like this. Let Google get the job done.