Bloomington Herald-Times: IU News Room: Indiana University

"A federal court ruling in New York last week is being hailed as a big win for universities including Michigan and Indiana, higher education in general, students with print disabilities and Google, which has scanned more than 10 million books in its partnership with an organization called HathiTrust. Brad Wheeler doesn't discount any of the above. But he emphasizes: 'It's a big victory for students who need access to these materials,' said Indiana University's vice president for information technology. And while last week's court decision leaves several questions open to interpretation or further litigation, it also appears to give a green light to the kind of meta-analysis of millions of books that was impossible before the digital age. Hathi means "elephant," and about five years ago, Michigan, Indiana and several other major research universities formed the HathiTrust to take on an elephant of a job -- the digitization of their massive library collections. The effort took off in a big way when Google joined the partnership and began tackling the digitization. A year ago, The Author's Guild and other co-litigants sued the HathiTrust for violation of copyright laws. Michigan, where the HathiTrust is located, took up defense of the lawsuit and leading partners such as IU filed amicus briefs supporting the trust's defense. U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer Jr. threw out the law suit last week..."