Karen Coyle has given us a thoughtful comparative analysis of the University of Michigan's and the University of California's mass book digitization contracts with Google. In the balance, it appears that these contracts give Google more latitude than either university has to use the files.

Michigan has decided that it will not allow display of Google digital books that are covered by copyright. That is a prudent stance. Google is already engaged in lawsuits with publishers over Google's right to digitize copyrighted books even if it displays nothing more than snippets of text. Let Google pay for the court fight and then see what can or cannot be done.