Google Library Project To Aim For Grad Libraries

To the editors:

Thank you for your excellent and well-detailed editorial on Google’s efforts to digitize the holdings of major research libraries, including Harvard’s (“Technological Tomes,” Sept. 29). The article articulates well the many reasons that we think this project is a valuable and path-breaking one. Two clarifications may be helpful to your readers.

First, the University is still in a pilot project with Google to test various aspects of the digitization of works from our library collection. We are also engaged in discussions with Google concerning the terms on which the project may be expanded.

Second, our long-term goals for this program extend well beyond Widener Library and the Harvard College Library network to include the libraries of Harvard’s graduate and professional schools, many of which rank at the very top for their specialties. Our goal is to digitize books from the entirety of Harvard’s library system, which extends across all of our faculties and forms the largest academic library in the world.

SIDNEY VERBA ’53

Cambridge, Mass.

September 29, 2005

The writer is Carl. H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library.