Update February 3, 2010: Klaus Graf explains that book authors who are holders of the rights to the online versions of their works can make their works open access in Hathitrust. Klaus has also made his works free in Google Books. Thanks, Klaus!
In my earlier writings on the Google Books Settlement (here and here), I had mistakenly thought that none of my works would be included. After reading this letter from a group of academic authors, I realized that book chapters that I wrote might very well be included. The authors suggest that academic authors might prefer that their out-of-print books be open access. For me, this is definitely the case! Please make my works open access (CC-NC), or public domain. While I haven't opted out (and am not sure why I should have to - this is a U.S. lawsuit, and I am not a U.S. citizen), I haven't opted in, either. I wonder how many other authors hadn't thought about their chapters being included in Google Books?
Excerpts from the letter:
we believe that most unclaimed books in the GBS corpus will prove to be books written by scholars for scholars, and most such authors would prefer that their out-of-print books be available on an open access basis
In particular, we think this fiduciary should have the explicit authority to set prices for unclaimed books at $0 or make them available under Creative Commons licenses or other open access terms insofar as there is reason to think that their academic authors would prefer for them to be made available on these terms. The UWF should not have the power to authorize Google to alter the texts of books.
Comments: hear, hear! As noted above, please make my works open access. I write my scholarly works as part of my service to my profession, and for the public good, not for profit. OA for me. Under my preferred CC license for these works (CC-NC), people are free to create modifications of my work, but not for profit, which excludes Google. At any rate, I think that I have the right to say that the original which is posted should be exactly as I wrote it.
