Showtiming our libraries (if:book)

Ben Vershobow in if:book just now posted a brief discussion of the University of California’s just-released contract with Google to digitize its library holdings. The contract reveals that Google has asked for and has apparently gotten certain exclusive rights to the use of the digital copies of UC’s books, à la The Smithsonian’s deal with Showtime. Pretty disturbing.

Isn’t this a bit of an indication of what I said was going to happen? Google is planning to monetize the holdings of major libraries for themselves, and librarians seem to be cheering them on.