An Open Letter to Google, William Patry, and Google's Library Partners

In honor of National Library Week, I write this open letter:

To: Google, William Patry (a copyright expert and Google's senior copyright lawyer), and to Google's Library Partners

Greetings,

I know that you are very excited about the partnership between Google and its Library Partners, who have supplied books and other materials for scanning. I know that some have had serious concerns about the project, but I'm not discussing general concerns here.

All I'm asking for is full access for the public to government documents on Google BookSearch. These documents are in the public domain and therefore should not be limited by claims of copyright, by Google or by the Library Partners.

According to Google's own FAQ:

For books that enter Book Search through the Library Project, what you see depends on the book's copyright status. . . . If the book is in the public domain and therefore out of copyright, you can page through the entire book and even download it and read it offline.

This statement implies all materials on Book Search that one cannot page through or download are not in the public domain.

Can you provide the public a reason why Google BookSearch has not made public domain government documents fully available? These documents include:

• U.S. House and Senate Reports (including these Sunshine Act Reports!)
• Agency and Administrative Materials (including from the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration, Code of Federal Regulation, and the War Department),
• many publications of the U.S. Government Printing Office, and
• U.S. Supreme Court Cases

I'm sure you know that government works created by the U.S. federal government are not protected by copyright; instead these works (with limited exceptions for materials withheld for security, export control, and policy reasons) are in the public domain.

Some of these documents are dually public domain -- not only as government documents, but also because all works published in the United States before 1923 are in the public domain (see this excellent copyright chart) . Why aren't these (1821 House report and 1879 Senate report) fully available?

Already scanned government publications should be available for both full viewing and as downloadable PDFs. (According to Google in regards to public domain material: "Google now allows Internet users all over the world to download (and therefore print and read offline) these same out-of-copyright books.")

I, and the public, await your response.

Appendix

These are Google's (U.S.) Library Partners' Statements on Public Domain materials:

* University of California: "Anyone will be able to freely view, browse and read UC's public domain books, including many of the treasures in the libraries' historic and special collections."
* Harvard University: "Users elsewhere will be able to discover books that they might not otherwise find, ... to read out-of-copyright books online, and to print out copies."
* University of Michigan: "The full text (all pages and covers) will display for titles out of copyright; users will be able to page back and forth within the volume, and retrieve all text through searches." and "Public domain works can be brought fully into the light."
* New York Public Library: "NYPL is working with Google to offer a collection of its public domain books, which will be scanned in their entirety and made available for free to the public online. Users will be able to search and browse the full text of these works."
* Princeton University: "Because the books being digitized are in the public domain, users will be able to view the full text of the books and download them for leisure reading, research or printing for later reference."
* Stanford University: "Many items from Stanford’s collections are now available through Google Book Search ... The available items include many U.S. Congressional Hearings. To see samples of items from Stanford’s government documents collections, try searching on terms such as “National Flood Insurance”, “Artic National Wildlife Refuge”, or “Food Stamp Act ”. ... Materials that are clearly in the public domain (mostly materials with publication dates of 1922 or earlier) will be available to the general public through Google. All users should be able to view the full text of public domain materials online."
Note: Some Stanford-held government documents are available in full text and PDF, but not all.
* University of Texas at Austin: "Anyone will be able to freely view, browse and read the university's public domain books, including a number of unique treasures in the Libraries' historic collections."
* University of Virginia: "Anyone will be able to freely view, browse and read U.Va.’s books in the public domain."
* University of Wisconsin-Madison: "Users will be able to access the full text of hundreds of thousands of public domain materials from the UW-Madison Libraries and the Wisconsin Historical Society Library."

Update: As mentioned by Rick in the comments and at his post on the Prelinger library blog, this problem with gov docs on Google has been noted before. I hope this situation can be fixed soon -- can we at least all agree that pre-1923 government documents should be available?

Welcome to new readers via Sivacracy, the Open Access Network, LibraryLaw, Duke Library Blog, FreeGovInfo, and Librarian.net!

5/15: The American Historical Association blog discusses another issue with Google Books, quality control, and the comments show an interesting range of views.