U of Mich Signs Expanded Agreement With Google

By Norman Oder -- Publishers Weekly, 5/21/2009 8:03:00 AM

The University of Michigan, the institution that in 2004 launched Google’s vast project to digitize library collections, has signed an expanded agreement with Google that, among other things, provides the school a subsidized subscription to Google Book Search and allows UM, as well as Google’s other library partners, to challenge the pricing of institutional subscriptions. (There are 28 other library partners, but several are outside the U.S., to which the settlement is limited.)

UM hailed it as “an important step in ensuring that the university's vision of broad public access to its print collection becomes a reality.” Library Dean Paul Courant stated, "Through this amendment we are establishing a solid foundation for future library work and providing the greatest public good for library users.”

While the agreement expands access in several ways, including giving UM a digital copy of every book it owns, even if scanned from elsewhere (see more below), probably the most controversial aspect will be its positioning of UM and other Google partners as stand-ins for the library and higher education community regarding pricing and arbitration. The American Library Association (ALA) and other library groups have already called for court oversight over pricing, warning of Google’s potential abuse of its monopoly.

LJ asked John Price Wilkin, UM’s associate university librarian for library information technology, if this provision put UM and partner libraries in a privileged position. “It would be impossible to have some sort of comprehensive process,” replied Wilkin, who said he’d characterize the libraries as “honest brokers.” He said UM had not been able to contact ALA to discuss the pricing issue while it was under negotiation.

Courant noted, “The agreement gives any participating library the right to challenge pricing. There are over two dozen such libraries now (although we don’t know how many will sign new agreements) and I would expect more.  So it’s not just UM and a few other big ones.”

ALA comment
The New York Times reported that the ALA called the agreement a good step but not sufficient protection for libraries, “Any library must have the ability to request that the judge review the pricing should a dispute arise,” said Corey Williams, associate director at the ALA Washington Office.

Pricing review
According to the 36-page Amendment to the Cooperative Agreement (PDF), 60 days after Google first makes an Institutional Subscription generally available to Higher Education Institutions and every two years after that, any partner institutions (“Initiating Libraries”) may request a review of the pricing to make sure it’s in accordance with the Settlement Agreement’s objectives of “the realization of revenue at market rates for each Book and license on behalf of Rightsholders and the realization of broad access.”

Google will contribute $100,000 toward each of the first two possible Pricing Reviews; plus somewhere between $50,000 and $75,000 for future reviews, with the institutions responsible for fees and costs above those sums.

To the pricing reviewer, Google will provide the number of postsecondary academic institutions that have Institutional Subscriptions, a histogram showing the percentage of institutions that pay each price within a Pricing Category; and Google’s list price for each Pricing Category. The Pricing Reviewer may request in writing additional information and “Google will provide such requested information unless it reasonably determines that such information is not necessary for the Pricing Reviewer to render a determination.”

The Pricing Review Report would not contain actual pricing information unless “Google otherwise agrees or the information is otherwise publicly available… but may contain conclusions based on such information.”

After receiving a report, any Initiating Library may call for arbitration, and all requests in one period will be combined. If the arbitrator determines that the price of the subscriptions should be lower, Google will adjust the price and charge no more than the arbitrator-determined pricing for at least two years.

Subscription subsidies
Google for 25 years will subsidize the cost of UM’s subscription based on the number of books scanned from Michigan, which in practice means it will be free. That’s not necessarily the case for all partners. The clause is contingent on the library making its content available to Google and that it has fewer than 60,000 FTE users.

If the conditions are not met, UM instead would get a subsidy equal to the price of one FTE for every 50 library works digitized by Google or provided by UM in digitized form that are included in the Institutional Subscription Database. 

Why a 25-year subscription? “Ten years isn’t long enough and 100 is too long," Courant responded. "We wanted to make sure that the investments we have made in building these collections would bear fruit for our students and faculty for at least a generation."

Advertising in subscriptions
The amendment says that if Google provides a version that does not contain advertising, it reserves the right to price such Institutional Subscription differently from the Institutional Subscription that contains advertising. It is unclear how that would apply to all the library partners, but UM would apparently get the advertising-free subscription under the same subsidy provisions noted above.

Support for Research Corpus
The initial settlement provides for a Research Corpus to be hosted at up to two Host Sites at any given time, and to be used in not-for-profit endeavors. 

The new amendment agreement states that Google will provide 100 person-hours per Host Site, per year for two years, and provide not less than $5 million to support one or more Host Sites (including Google as a Host Site).

Other provisions
The agreement allows UM to use Google scans for projects like HathiTrust, which Wilkin heads. Specifically, it lets the university use its digital copy “as part of web services offered in cooperation with partner academic libraries and/or partner public research libraries.” Those libraries must agree not to redistribute the digital copies and take reasonable efforts to prevent third parties from bulk downloading or automated access.

Also, Google will make public domain works digitized from UM accessible to users with print disabilities in the same ways as in-copyright books covered under the settlement agreement.

Public domain expansion
After 20 years, UM may provide public domain works to any entity as long as it’s not directly competing with Google. Wilkin explained that, “beginning now and for the next 20 years, we may provide (in bulk) bodies of public domain works to non-profit initiatives, including libraries, and during that first 20-year period Google may not reasonably withhold their permission.” After that, permission is not needed. He noted that, in 2050, all restrictions disappear.

“We hope that most needs are met through online access to the copies in HathiTrust or Google Book Search,” he said, but sometimes a networked service isn’t best. “For example, a researcher might want to explore automated translation with texts from a specific period, or to do part-of-speech tagging and then subsequent linguistic analysis on texts drawn from the repository. While we hope to provide more and more robust services centrally, it’s occasionally the case that some activities can only take place in a separate and specialized environment.”