New Google Books Library Project Timeline: Now With (more) Citations! (original) (raw)
It seemed like this inspired some interest even in sketchy form, so I thought I should flesh it out a bit, and make it more useful. I’ve added citations to the info provided below. Where the source is my own dissertation interviews (with librarians and Googlers involved in the project), I’ve used the notation (INT). I still consider this a living document, and so reserve the right to add to it as I continue to write things up more formally.
| 1996 | Backrub, precursor to PageRank, developed based on principles/ideas from scholarly publishing/citation linking (widely known; e.g. Battelle 2005, Levy 2011, also the official Google Books History page) |
|---|---|
| 1998 | Google search engine launches |
| 2001 | First talks between Larry Page and librarians at the University of Michigan (INT) |
| 2002 | Talks underway in earnest at UM and Stanford; Larry Page still personally involved; Monthly calls btw Google & UM (INT) |
| 2003 | Oxford, NYPL, Harvard brought in on discussions (INT) |
| 2003 (December) | Google Print publisher project first publicly discussed |
| 2004 (Spring) | Contracts signed with G5 libraries (e.g., Michigan’s; the others are not public, but logic would suggest that they must have been signed around the same time) |
| 2004 | Pilot scanning at U. of Michigan; role of library partnerships manager(s) created (INT) |
| 2004 (August 19) | Google IPO (August 19) (Widely publicized; the founders’ IPO letter is one source) |
| 2004 (December 14) | Google Print Library Project announced (Harvard internally 1 day before everyone else) |
| 2005 | Scanning begins at G5 libraries (Stanford = March); Google starts building out additional scanning centers (INT) |
| 2005 | Dan Clancy hired to manage project (INT; also on his public LinkedIn profile) |
| 2005 (September-October) | Lawsuits filed by AG, AAP (about a million possible refs – most comprehensive for all things lawsuit-related is The Public Index) |
| 2005 (November) | Google changes name of project to Google Book Search |
| 2006 | Google hits 1 million volumes; rate of scanning increases; Doug Kuch hired to run logistics for GBLP (all INT). Three U.S. scanning centers in operation (to my knowledge): Mountain View (CA), Ann Arbor (MI), Cambridge (MA) (INT). |
| 2006 | Partners added: U of California (August), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (September), U of Wisconsin (October), U of Virginia (November) |
| 2007 | Partners added: U of Texas (January), Biblioteca de Catalunya (January), Princeton (February), Bavarian State Library (March), Lausanne (May), Ghent (May), Mysore (May), CIC (June), Keio (July), Cornell (August), Columbia (December) |
| 2007 | NYPL begins to offer access to its scans via its catalog |
| 2008 | Google finishes scanning materials from Harvard and Oxford (INT) – I suspect NYPL also finished around this time, but have no direct substantiation for that. |
| 2008 (February) | University of Michigan reaches 1 million books scanned |
| 2008 (October) | Settlement Agreement first proposed (info at The Public Index); HathiTrust Launched |
| 2008 (November) | Google reaches 7 million volumes (6 million from libraries) |
| 2009 (November) | Revised Settlement Agreement put forward; some library contracts revised in its wake (in anticipation of its approval) (info at The Public Index; also amended contracts for Michigan, Wisconsin, and Texas) |
| 2009 (December) | French court loss; no more scanning in-copyright books in France |
| 2010 | Partners added: Italian Ministry of Culture (March), Austrian National Library (June), Dutch National Library (July) |
| 2010 (June) | Google reaches 12 million volumes |
| 2011 | Partners added: Czech National Library (February), British Library (June) |
| 2011 (March) | Settlement Agreement rejected by court |
| 2011 (October) | Google shuts down Mountain View scanning center, leaving Ann Arbor as the sole remaining scanning center in the United States; rate of scanning decreased (INT) |
| 2012 (January) | HathiTrust reaches 10 million volumes |
| 2012 (March) | Google reaches 20 million volumes |