Google and Microsoft Establish Book Scanning Agreements with UCLA

In June, Microsoft announced that the libraries of the University of California will participate in its book-scanning project, known as Windows Live Book Search. Microsoft's program, unlike Google's similar project, is only scanning books in the public domain or for which the copyright owners have granted explicit permission. Google's approach has been to scan books, including those still covered by copyright, unless a copyright owner specifically objects.

Under the deal with Google, the University will provide as many as 3,000 books per day to the search engine for digitization, eventually totaling at least 2.5 million books. The university and Google will keep copies of the digitized works, but the university is bound by a number of restrictions on how it can use its copies. For example, the university must prevent other search engines from scanning the books.