LooseLeaves

Google to reboot online books project: In the face of potential lawsuits, as well as a wave of criticism from within the publishing industry, Google seems to have temporarily compromised on its original promise to publish a virtual library containing millions of books.

The Book Standard reported this week that the search engine giant will resume scanning books this month, but concentrate on digitising "older" books for the moment, so fudging the copyright issues which have provided much controversy. As well as publishing books out of copyright, however, Google plans to digitise some copyrighted books, although it says it is concentrating on those currently out of print. "As always, the focus of our library effort is on scanning books that are unique to libraries including many public domain books, orphaned works and out-of-print titles," said a Google Print spokesperson. "We're starting with library stacks that mostly contain older and out-of-circulation books, but also some newer books." This has not mollified the Association of American Publishers, which is pressing ahead with a lawsuit it hopes will halt Google. Previously, Google Print was sued by a group of authors. While only fragments of copyrighted books can be accessed online, they pointed out that the entire book has to be scanned to make it searchable.

These are only the opening shots in the war to bring the world's libraries to the internet. Microsoft has even teamed up with arch rival Yahoo to fund a separate effort by a group called Open Content Alliance, which is also scanning books, although it will seek permission before publishing copyrighted books. Microsoft is making the largest contribution to the alliance to date, with the $5 million (€4.1 million) donation enough to scan about 150,000 books. The resulting MSN Book Search is due to go online in test form next year.

There have been ongoing attempts at building online libraries. Because those on offer are usually out of copyright, the selection can be a mix of the classic and the antiquated, so on sites such as Bartleby.com it's possible to browse through books ranging from Gray's Anatomy to HG Wells's The War of the Worlds. Elsewhere, Project Guttenberg's (www.guttenberg.org) top 100 downloaded books gives an odd "bestsellers" list on which Leonardo da Vinci vies with Sun Tzu, James Joyce and Jane Austen. Reading the works on the web, though, isn't quite the same. Maybe it's old-fashioned, but the Books Desk can't imagine ever being excited about the idea of lazing on the beach and opening up a computer screen.

Morrissey on Eliot list

Portadown-born poet Sinead Morrissey is the sole Irish representative on this year's TS Eliot Prize shortlist. Her third collection, The State of the Prisons (Carcanet), already a joint-winner of this year's Michael Hartnett Poetry Award, is now in the running for the coveted prize, the winner of which will be announced in January and which comes with a £10,000 (€14,700) cheque. Morrissey's previous book, Between Here and There, was shortlisted in 2002. Reviewing The State of the Prisons in The Irish Times, Fiona Sampson described it as "a book of splendours" and a "necessary" book. Alongside historical themes, are those of actual and imagined travel. "With a risk-taking that's quiet but also vigorous, this is a poetics of curiosity, which looks outwards through the window which is also always a mirror," wrote Sampson. The other poets on the shortlist are Carol Ann Duffy, Helen Farish, David Harsent, Alice Oswald, Pascale Petit, Sheenagh Pugh, John Stammers, Gerard Woodward and Polly Clark.

Pin-up for Belfast

The Belfast Festival at Queen's wraps up this weekend, but not before tonight offers a double helping of poetry. At 6.30pm in the Great Hall, Cookstown's Nick Laird (below) will be reading from his collection, To A Fault, as well as from his debut novel, Utterly Monkey. Laird has been something of a literary pin-up boy this year, although he's probably fed-up of always being referred to as Zadie Smith's husband. So let's not do that this time.

At 8.30pm, there will probably be a few people dashing across the street to the council chamber in Queen's University's Lanyon Building to catch English poet Sarah Maguire, who is giving the second annual Irish Pages Lecture. While reflecting on the recent bombings in London, she will discuss Islamic love poetry as a contrast to the common perception of Islam, as well as reading from her own translations of Arabic poetry. Tickets for both events are £3.50 (€5.15) and £5 (€7.35), and can be purchased from the festival ticket office in Queen's (0044-02890971197) or at www.belfastfestival.com.