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Eighth Scholarly Communication Symposium
Google and the Future of Higher Education

On October 28, 2008, Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers announced the settlement of the litigation concerning the Google Books Project [http://books.google.com/].  Under the project, Google has been scanning millions of books provided by major research libraries and other sources.  For those books not in the public domain, publishers and authors claimed that Google’s scanning infringed their copyrights.

The settlement [http://books.google.com/booksrightsholders/] presents creates a mechanism for Google to pay rights holders for the right to display more of the books’ texts than it currently does under the current program.  Google will then distribute payments to copyright owners.  Google, in turn, will generate revenue through advertising and by selling to users the ability to see full text.

Our panel will address the clash between seemingly competing missions. Google’s goal is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible.”  Is the academy surrendering its mission to disseminate knowledge to a private corporation?  We invite you to join our speakers as they shed light on this case and its context for the Georgetown community.

Panel of Speakers:

Siva Vaidhyanathan, Associate Professor, Media Studies Program, University of Virginia (http://www.law.virginia.edu/lawweb/faculty.nsf/prfhpbw/sv2r)
James Grimmelmann, Associate Professor, New York Law School (http://james.grimmelmann.net/biography)
Richard Brown, Director, Georgetown University Press, and moderator (http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/reb7/)


Friday, February 27, 2009 10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
Lauinger Library, Murray Room, 5th Floor
Please RSVP to William Olsen, wco4@georgetown.edu
Presented by the Georgetown University Libraries Scholarly Communication Team