Attending Cornell University as an undergrad will cost you around $17,000 per semester. But if you just want to look through the school’s libraries, it’s free – some of their content will become available to everyone, thanks to an arrangement with Google’s Library Project.
“The collection housed at the extraordinary Mann Library will be digitized, making it possible for people everywhere to search and discover books on environmental science, public policy, natural resources, and much more,” announced William Rucklidge, a Google software engineer and Cornell man.
“This is tremendous news, and I hope people around the world will gain as much joy and enrichment from Cornell’s libraries as I did,” Rucklidge continued on the Inside Google Book Search Blog.
I’ll admit that I might gain more joy from another source – according to a release, Mann Library deals in “biological sciences, natural resources, plant, animal and environmental sciences, applied economics, management and public policy, human development, textiles and apparel, nutrition and food science,” while I’m more of a novel and short story sort of fellow – but it’s a nice thought.
Google’s also keeping mindful of lawyers – as with other Library Project developments, none of this will violate copyright law. Only out-of-copyright texts will be made fully available, and for everything else (out of the 500,000 books that might be scanned), would-be readers “will just get the basic background (such as the book’s title and the author’s name), [and] at most a few lines of text related to their search and information about where they can buy or borrow a book.”
