International library news

NY Court hears dispute over Google Digital Library Project

A lawyer for the Authors Guild has urged a federal appeals court in New York to force Google to reward authors for including their books in its Digital Library Project, reports ABC News. The Authors Guild wants Google to pay $750 for each of the more than 20 million copyrighted books it has already copied. Seth Waxman, a lawyer for Google, said: ‘In our view, the entire book search program is fair use.’ The long-running copyright infringement lawsuit against Google over its book-scanning project began in September 2005 when the Authors Guild sued Google, arguing that the Digital Library Project was a commercial venture that that ‘fair use’ did not apply. As previously reported by Books+Publishing, in November 2013 Judge Denny Chin dismissed the Authors Guild’s case in a summary judgement delivered in the US District Court in New York.

Alan Turing Institute for Data Science to be based at British Library

In the UK, a new £42m (A$79m) Alan Turing Institute for Data Science will be based at the British Library at the centre of a new Knowledge Quarter, reports the Guardian. The institute, named after the famous mathematician whose work at Bletchley Park during the World War II led to the cracking of the German ‘Enigma’ codes, will focus on ‘big data and algorithm research’. The Knowledge Quarter is a partnership of 35 academic, cultural, research, scientific and media organisations based in based in Kings Cross, Euston and Bloomsbury. Partners include the British Library, Google, the Wellcome Trust and University College London.

Category: Library news