Google Adds 12 Universities to Book Project

Nearly doubling the educational institutions participating in its massive effort to digitize the world's books, Google said Wednesday that another twelve universities have joined Google Book Search. In total, they will contribute up to 10 million volumes to be scanned.

The new agreement was forged with the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, which is represented by the University of Chicago and 11 universities that make up the Big Ten athletic conference: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin. The committee and Google say they will respect copyright law, but the search engine is facing lawsuits from the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over the effort.