Google Books Again

The issue of the GoogleBooks settlement has been attracting a lot of postings to the NZ Libs listserv recently. The principle concerns seem to be: the potential loss of material should Google cease to exist, the inadequacy of one free terminal for libraries to access GoogleBooks, the possibility of Google acting as censor and no guarantee that the price for libraries to access the database will remain reasonable. The latest development is that libraries that allow Google to digitise their books will be able to protest if they think the price that Google is charging is too high (Helft, 2009).