This past Saturday, Yale Law School's Information Society Project hosted a fantastic symposium on "Library 2.0".  Materials from the conference, including video of the sessions and the concurrent twitter conversations is available at: http://yaleispblog.net/ .  Take a look, the issues are increadibly important: its no exageration to say that the future of society will, to a large extent, be driven by the resolution of these issues.  Also, it was great fun.

Google has reached a settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers in two different law suits arising under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 101. The suits were filed in the Southern District of New York on September 20, 2005 and October 19, 2005, respectively, challenging Google's plans to digitize and share copies and snippets of books without express permission from the author.  You can log onto Pacer to view the complaints and responses.  The password to Pacer is available on the intranet, under library database passwords.  

Under the settlement agreement, which remains subject to approval, Google will pay $45 million dollars to resolve existing claims, but it also will allow Google to continue digitizing books and inserts.  Read more about the future of Google Book Search, including options for accessing the resources.  Of particular note:

We'll also be offering libraries, universities and other organizations the ability to purchase institutional subscriptions, which will give users access to the complete text of millions of titles while compensating authors and publishers for the service. Students and researchers will have access to an electronic library that combines the collections from many of the top universities across the country. Public and university libraries in the U.S. will also be able to offer terminals where readers can access the full text of millions of out-of-print books for free.  

 Sometimes the Internet feels slow and there has been a lot of scary press recently about it slowing down further as it gets more congested.  Well, maybe we don't have to worry.  CERN who brought you the web (and has a hand in the new supercollider) has announced the "grid" a communications network with speeds up to 10000 times faster than the internet!