CIC Libraries Join in Google Book Search Project
The Midwest's twelve-university consortium, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), has announced an agreement with Google to digitize distinctive collections across all its libraries as part of the Google Book Search project. UIC is part of this initiative.
Over the next several years, Google will scan and make searchable up to 10 million volumes from CIC libraries. Public domain materials can be viewed, searched and downloaded in their entirety. For books under copyright protection, a search will result in basic information and a snippet of text surrounding the search term. Users seeking further information will be directed to avenues for purchase or library access.
This initiative will vastly expand UIC students' and faculty's desktop access to exceptional library resources. Over time, the shared digital repository will enable librarians to archive and organize content collectively for scholarly activity. Additionally the project will ensure the preservation of materials that go out of print, deteriorate with age or are otherwise threatened. Digitization will enable the UIC Library to preserve its historical collections for all time.
This partnership with Google will enable the CIC universities to digitize library content at a scale and scope not possible with thelimited means available to individual institutions. And now, with the future promise of a shared digital repository, our universities will enter into an ambitious, groundbreaking collaboration to collectively archive digital public domain materials previously housed only within the bricks and mortar of individual libraries.
Other CIC member universities include the University of Chicago, Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign., field_56ba6f8fdb00c