The University of Wisconsin at Madison is a Google scanning partner and was one of the first libraries to sign an amended agreement after the settlement was announced. Their letter supporting the settlement says a few things that haven’t been said before.
The letter invokes the Wisconsin Idea, as articulated by UW-Madison President Charles Van Hise in 1904, when he said he’d “never be content until the beneficent influence of the university reaches every home in the state.” It’s nice to see a library articulating its public mission to make its collections as broadly available as possible. Other publicly minded librarians have reached different conclusions, but UW-Madison does a good job of connecting its view of the settlement to its fundamental principles.
The letter mentions some of the library’s special collections that are being digitized, including genealogical materials and its Native American and African American collections. These details give the letter a specificity that’s been missing from some of the other letters in support.
I also found this paragraph noteworthy:
This aspect of the settlement [print-on-demand, one of the optional New Revenue Models] could also alter or eliminate the traditional interlibrary loan process. In the end, it may be more effective, in respect to both cost and time, to buy a single print copy on demand than to borrow and ship a copy from another library, resulting in additional fair compensation for the authors and publishers.