- Via Publishers Weekly and the NYT's Bits blog, news that a group of University of California professors have raised concerns about the proposed Google Books Settlement from the standpoint of academic authors (their 9-page letter to the court charged with approving the settlement is here in PDF). UC faculty and administration reps have already endorsed the settlement. Many of the same concerns we've seen raised by others, and all good questions worthy of discussion. The professors also take the Authors Guild (one of the parties to the settlement) to task for not adequately considering academic authors in their negotiations.
- The Bibliothèque Nationale de France has ended its feud with Google and will join the Google Book Project, French and international media reported yesterday (the front-page headline in La Tribune translated to "Google Has Won"). Denis Bruckman, director of collections at the library, said the decision to join Google was purely financial: "We will not stop our own digitising programme, but if Google can enable us to go faster and farther, then why not?"
