Published Fall/Winter 2007
 
Google Book Search
An Interview with Ben Bunnell
by Heather Steffen | ns 69
Founded in a Stanford dorm room in 1996, Google is the world's most popular internet search engine. It has a earned 50% web-search market share, a new entry in the OED (verb: "to google"), and $18.5 billion net worth for each of its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google's search engine, grounded in the theory that web pages can be most effectively ranked based on how many relevant pages link to them, is considered the most useful on the web. In 2000, Google began selling advertisements alongside their searches. By refusing the eye-catching but annoying whack-a-mole style ad, and by posting only those that relate directly to a user's search, their ads have attained incredibly high click rates. The company has also developed an array of services to augment their basic search, including Image Search, Google Maps, and Google Earth. Gmail, Google Video, and Google Apps are bringing Google into even more sectors with free email, video posting, and a more affordable competitor to Microsoft Office.
Along with its desire to "do no evil," Google's mission statement is one of altruism: "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Because much of this information is still trapped in the confines of print, Google has developed Google Book Search, an effort to make all the world's books searchable online. The project has generated both excitement and criticism, but it stands out as the most ambitious attempt of its sort today. In this interview, Ben Bunnell, Manager of Library Partnerships for Google Book Search, explains the goal and process of Google Book Search and addresses the copyright questions for which it has been most harshly attacked.
This interview took place via email during September 2007, with the facilitation of Google's media relations spokeswomen Megan Lamb and Jennifer Parson. It was conducted by Heather Steffen, managing editor of minnesota review while a PhD student in literary and cultural studies at Carnegie Mellon University.
Steffen: What is Google Book Search?
Bunnell: Google Book Search is the name for Google's project to make all of the knowledge contained within the world's books searchable and discoverable online. Put simply, our goal is to digitize all the books in the world and make them as easy to search, find, and discover as any web page.
Steffen: What was the impetus behind the project? What is its goal?
Bunnell: Well, let's start with Google's mission: To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We cite our mission a lot because it really does inform the decisions we make and the projects we embark on. Google has arguably done a pretty good job organizing and indexing the information born online, but information on the web is not the same thing as "the world's information." Most of the world's information is not online, and a very large amount of the world's offline information is in books. Of these, the vast majority (more than 80%) are out of print, not widely available, and often held by only a few libraries that welcome anyone able to come to them and search their stacks. The goal of this project is to enable any person, anywhere, at any time to have the tools to search, discover, and find the great works of history and culture, works currently part of extraordinary collections of some of the world's most respected libraries, as well as works in print and on bookstore shelves today. By bringing more human knowledge online, we hope to provide a better, more comprehensive and useful search experience for Google users around the world.
Steffen: Where do the books come from?
Bunnell: We get the books from two sources: publishers and libraries. In fact, the Google Book Search project has two components, reflecting each of the sources of books. Through the Publisher Partner Program, publishers, authors, and other copyright holders send us their books to digitize and put online. Users can search the full text of these books, and can see a few pages that are relevant to their search term, or just browse a section of the book, with the copyright holders deciding how many pages they want users to be able to read. If a book is of interest, the user can click on links to the publisher's website, or to an online bookseller, and purchase the book. They can also easily discover the closest library to them that holds the book. We are now working with more than 10,000 publishing partners.
The other component is the Library Project, through which we non-destructively digitize the collections of libraries around the world. We currently work with 27 library partners. All of the books we get from libraries are fully indexed and searchable. For books that come from libraries and are in the public domain, we allow users to see all of the pages. For books for which we haven't determined copyright status, we allow full-text searching, but we don't show even a page of the book. We do display a few lines of text surrounding the search term, so that the user can see it in context. For all of these books, we provide pointers for users to purchase or borrow them.
Steffen: What are the nuts and bolts of the process for scanning a book? Who does the scanning?
Bunnell: This project is about digitizing books in large volume, non-destructively. In order to build the project to the scale needed to digitize such a large number of books in a reasonable period of time, Google designed its own proprietary technology.
Steffen: Why should Google do this rather than leave it in the hands of libraries or other public institutions?
Bunnell: Libraries have been digitizing parts of their collections for years, and continue to do so. Often, these digitization projects focus on extremely rare or delicate materials that require very specialized handling for digitization. I think Google complements these projects by leveraging economies of scale to digitize books in good condition more cheaply and quickly than individual organizations. The University of Michigan estimated that scanning their collections at their current pace of scanning (roughly 5,000 books per year) would take them hundreds of years. The agreement with Google allows these books to be scanned in less than ten. Libraries get copies of the scans that Google makes and have a diverse range of goals they hope to achieve by working with us. For example, Stanford University Librarian Michael A. Keller says, "Stanford has been digitizing texts for years now to make them more accessible and searchable, but with books, as opposed to journals, such efforts have been severely limited in scope for both technical and financial reasons. The Google arrangement catapults our effective digital output from the boutique scale to the truly industrial. Through this program and others like it, Stanford intends to promote learning and stimulate innovation."
For the University of California system, Associate Vice Provost for Scholarly Information and University Librarian Daniel Greenstein explains that reasons for working with us include similar goals: "In this new world, people will make connections between information and ideas that were hitherto inaccessible, driving the pace of innovation in all areas of life—academic, economic, and civic—and enhancing the use of the world's great libraries. With digital copies of our library holdings, we will also provide a safeguard for the countless thousands of authors, publishers, and readers who would be devastated by catastrophic loss occasioned, for example, by natural disaster. Anyone who doubts the impact that such disaster can have on our cultural memory need look no further than the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina on our sister libraries in the Gulf States. As an institution that has built these vast collections as a public good and in the public trust, joining the Google library partnership was the right thing to do."
Steffen: Do you see the project as having a preservation function?
Bunnell: We don't think of Google Book Search as a preservation project so much as an access project, allowing users to more easily find books and read them in whatever format (digital or hard copy) and from whatever source (bookstore or library) they prefer, within the boundaries of copyright law. That said, we certainly take great care of the books we handle and scan, and many of our library partners see Google Book Search as an important step to preserve the libraries' collections and to provide the broader public with in-depth access to historically significant print resources, as mentioned in the previous answer.
Steffen: Who are your competitors in the race to digitize libraries?
Bunnell: I don't know that I'd characterize it as a "race." We believe it's very important to make all the world's books searchable online. There are several other companies and non-profits currently engaged in digitization projects, and we welcome all efforts to make it easier for users to search and discover books online.
Steffen: Who do you project Book Search's audience to be?
Bunnell: I think that anyone who searches for information on Google is Book Search's audience. There are so many audiences who can benefit from Book Search—it's good news for people who read books because they can more easily discover books that are of interest to them, and where to buy them; it's good news for authors because it makes it easier for more people to discover their work; it's good news for publishers because they can more easily reach a wider audience; it's good news for booksellers because readers are directed to the bookshops where they can buy interesting publications; and it's good news for libraries because it means more people can discover the books on their shelves.
Steffen: What is the response from librarians? Booksellers? Scholars?
Bunnell: Since the project was announced in 2004, we've continued to build strong partnerships with publishers and libraries. Like I explained earlier, we've partnered with more than 10,000 publishers and 27 libraries worldwide. We work with nearly every major US publisher, and most major European publishers as well. Our ultimate goal is to work with publishers and libraries to create a comprehensive, searchable, virtual card catalog of all books in all languages that helps users discover new books, publishers discover new readers, and booksellers discover new customers. Meanwhile, scholars have welcomed the new research opportunities created by Google Book Search. In the words of one historian, thanks to Google Book Search, "possibilities of scholarship have been utterly transformed."
Steffen: What copyright issues has Google Books raised?
Bunnell: Some people are under the mistaken impression that Google is giving books away for free. Google is not giving books away for free. We are helping people find books, and what we display digitally is bound by copyright law.
In addition, there are some publishers who think that Google should not be able to digitize copyrighted works without the copyright owners' prior permission—even if all we ever show is bibliographic information and one or two quotations. We take the view—backed by international copyright law—that no copyright is violated in this process, since the amount of text that we display is so small. In fact, it's comparable to a quote from a book in a review or our web search results, both of which are perfectly legal.
Google recognizes that digitization does raise challenges—but more importantly, that digitization represents a tremendous opportunity too. That's why we're working in partnership with publishers to help them maximize the value it brings to the industry. The result has been more exposure and in many cases more revenue for authors, publishers and producers of content. If publishers or authors do not want to have their books digitized under the Library Project, Google will exclude them.
Steffen: What kind of impact do you think Book Search could have on physical book production?
Bunnell: Overall, I think that as a technology, the physical book is working fine. What Google Book Search does impact is the ability of people to discover and connect to the books they need, either through a local library or a bookseller. Google Book Search shines a digital flashlight on books that may otherwise have been forgotten.
Steffen: How do you think Book Search might change the way people deal with books and the information they contain?
Bunnell: These days, oftentimes when people can't find information easily online they assume it isn't there. We believe that by making the world's books discoverable online, we're giving users greater, richer access to our collective cultural heritage.
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