The popular internet search engine Google formally began its controversial Print for Libraries Project this week, nearly 600 years after Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press.

The project, which was first announced last December, involves scanning the books of four universities—Harvard, Oxford, Stanford and the University of Michigan—and the New York Public Library in order to make the materials freely accessible online.

The massive archiving effort was launched earlier this spring in spite of strong criticism from American publishers and European library officials

The digitalization itself, which is expected to take several millions of dollars to complete, has stirred controversy far outside academia since its unveiling.

Two weeks ago, the Association of American University Presses (AAUP), a group of academic publishers, sent a letter to Google claiming that the search engine’s project involved a “systematic copyright infringement on a massive scale.”

The group, which represents 125 non-profit publishers of scholarly journals and academic books, said that it had signed onto Google Print for Publishers. This project would have permitted the publishers themselves to determine which books and periodicals could be digitized and made searchable online. Since this agreement, however, Google has also launched the Print for Libraries Project—a separate branch of the effort that copies universities’ books and materials without publishers’ explicit consents.

“This large-scale infringement has the potential for serious financial damage to the members of the AAUP,” read the organization’s letter, written by its executive director, Peter Givler.

“The more we talked about it with our lawyers, the more questions bubbled up,” he said. “And so far, Google hasn’t provided us with any good answers.”

The group asked for a response from Google by June 20 and also enclosed a list of 16 questions intended to clarify the project’s logistics and how the company plans to protect copyrights.

Despite the AAUP’s concerns, Google has already begun to scan copyrighted materials at Harvard, Michigan, and Stanford. Because these universities all operate publishing outfits represented by the group, Givler said in an interview last week that the publishers’ chances of suing Google are “extremely remote.”

Although Google is also in the midst of scanning books at the New York Public Library and the University of Oxford, both of these institutions are providing only materials in the “public domain”: works that are no longer protected by copyright laws.

ADVERSARIES ABROAD

Copyright concerns aren’t the only clouds casting a shadow over the print engine’s digitalization project. Since its unveiling in December, the plan has also garnered outcry in Europe for encouraging cultural imperialism.

Earlier this May, six European leaders jointly proposed forming a “European digital library” to counter the Google Print Project, with many other European nations likely to join the venture.

Heads of state in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Hungary wrote in a formal appeal to the European Union that failing to digitalize is to jeopardize the “just place” of European heritage “in the future geography of knowledge.”