“Our estimate is about a quarter to a third of the books [in our libraries] are not under copyright,” Verba said in an interview.
Regarding the future of the project, Verba said he expects Google to resume scanning books under copyright, but that nothing is certain.
“It is frankly hard to predict,” he said. “It’s in an evolving state right now.... Copyright laws are incredibly complicated.”
But Verba added that he is very excited about the project’s ability to fight the growing notion that “all the world’s knowledge” can be found on websites.
“[The project] has people go to Google and find references to books,” he said. “That’s the reason I think it’s great.”
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—Staff writer Evan H. Jacobs can be reached at ehjacobs@fas.harvard.edu.