For immediate release:
November 13, 2008

For more information, contact:
Prue Adler
Association of Research Libraries
202-296-2296
prue@arl.org

Corey Williams
American Library Association
202-628-8410
cwilliams@alawash.org

The Google Library Project Settlement: ARL and ALA Release Guide for Libraries

Washington DC—The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the American Library Association (ALA) have released “A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement,” by Jonathan Band, JD.

The guide is designed to help the library community better understand the terms and conditions of the recent settlement agreement between Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers concerning Google’s scanning of copyrighted works. Band notes that the settlement is extremely complex and presents significant challenges and opportunities to libraries. The guide outlines and simplifies the settlement’s provisions, with special emphasis on the provisions that apply directly to libraries.

“A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement” and related materials are available from the ARL Web site at http://www.arl.org/pp/ppcopyright/google/.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 123 research libraries in North America. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/.

The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit educational organization of more than 66,000 librarians, library trustees, and other friends of libraries dedicated to improving library services and promoting the public interest in a free and open information society. ALA is on the Web at http://www.ala.org/.

Jonathan Band helps shape the laws governing intellectual property and the Internet through a combination of legislative and appellate advocacy. He has represented clients with respect to the drafting of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA); database protection legislation; the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act; and other statutes relating to copyrights, privacy, spam, cybersecurity, and indecency. He complements this legislative advocacy by filing amicus briefs in significant cases related to these provisions. Jonathan Band is on the Web at http://www.policybandwidth.com/.