Tim Barton, the president of Oxford University Press has written a thoughtful article for the Chronicle on the Google Book Search settlement, “Saving Text From Oblivion: Oxford U. Press on the Google Book Settlement.” Barton makes the point that,
What once seemed at least debatable has now become irrefutable: If it’s not online, it’s invisible. While increasing numbers of long-out-of-date, public-domain books are now fully and freely available to anyone with a browser, the vast majority of the scholarship published in book form over the last 80 years is today largely overlooked by students, who limit their research to what can be discovered on the Internet.
Barton argues for accepting the settlement, even if it is imperfect. This came to me via Twitter from Andrew Logemann.