[E-mail posted by David Fleig, WSU Computing & Information Technology Division – November 17, 2006]
Jack Bernard, University of Michigan
Friday, December 1, 2006
11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Bernath Auditorium, Adamany Undergraduate Library
Sponsored by WSU Computing & Information Technology
Doing research will become a whole lot easier now that Google, Inc. is scanning library books at the University of Michigan, Harvard, Stanford and Oxford Universities, and the New York Public Library. This revolutionary digitization project will make even the most obscure book discoverable through a mechanism familiar to everyone—a Google search on the Web.
–Jack Bernard
Jack Bernard, an attorney and adjunct faculty member at U-M*, will talk about what a Google Book Search is and how it works, and how Google and U-M are able to engage in this ground-breaking endeavor. Google Books will provide universal access to the wealth of information buried in millions of books and change the way knowledge is transmitted and information is organized. Because this project has generated fierce controversy, he will emphasize how the Google Books Library project actually respects copyrights under the U.S. Constitution, and could even increase demand for copyrighted works.
The WSU community will have another opportunity to talk about this project and scholarly publishing issues on February 23, 2007, during the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) Integration Conference, Partnerships for Digital Humanities , which Wayne State is hosting. HASTAC is a national consortium committed to new forms of collaboration across communities and disciplines fostered by creative uses of technology.
*Professor Jack Bernard has been an attorney and policy analyst with the University of Michigan's Office of the Vice President and General Counsel since 1999. His areas of responsibility include intellectual property, student rights, speech, privacy, security, computing and cyberlaw, media rights, and disability law.