A privacy concern that I have with regards to the digitization of books is from my experience with the partnership of The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Google Inc. You see on May 13 of this year I found out by accident that the University of Wisconsin in partnership with Google Inc. had digitized my genealogical and family history work, “Fevens, a family history” in 2008. Because my work has a genealogical section, when I searched Google Books on May 13th, personal information of individuals mentioned in my book were displayed in the “snippet” search results. Google Inc. has now scanned all of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s genealogical collection, and I know for a fact that there are other books that are displaying current, private information at the Google Book site. In case you are wondering, The University of Wisconsin probably acquired their copy of “Fevens, a family history” from Coutts Library Services Canada, (“a leading international supplier of books to academic, medical, professional and reference libraries, with a niche in the supply of Standing Order titles through our customized system”) whom I sold 4 copies to. I figured they sold to libraries and I could trust a library to respect my copyright –yah right eh??? An article about my disagreement with the university and Google can be found in the Madison, Wisconsin newspaper The Capital Times — “Small-time author blasts Google-UW digital book project” at:
http://host.madison.com/news/article_a8b27e4d-6222-52c9-8377-132c6828d5a9.html

Sincerely,
Douglas Fevens
Halifax, Nova Scotia
The University of Wisconsin, Google, & Me
http://www.facebook.com/douglas.fevens