Stanford has recently expanded its part in the Google Book Search settlement agreement — currently in federal court — which expands the Google Book project’s scanning of millions of books to be made available to the public online.

Provost John Etchemendy and University Librarian Michael Keller expressed support for the project, which has scanned more than 1.7 million Stanford-owned books in the past five years, according to The Stanford Report.

The settlement additionally compensates authors for putting their work online, allowing many authors whose works are out of print to benefit from the settlement.

In the terms of the amended settlement agreement, Stanford’s endorsement of the settlement makes it a Fully Participating Library. More than two dozen other major libraries in the world are currently involved in the project.