On top of this the ALA in its truly infinite wisdom is backing the argument to free up orphan works. So now there is no one really stopping Google. This is being done so libraries can make digital libraries out of old materials only historical societies want Its a noble cause in their minds. But once thats done we have helped Google once again.

Remember I am not arguing that Google Booksearch (odd they didn’t call it Google Pagesearch?) or Google Scholar are great today. I am saying do A SWOT; look over your backs for the future, because you going to see what a 500 Lb gorilla really can do soon.

If we can’t adapt to that as a profession, we should fade away.

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Librarians need to get it straight: Google is a competitor and not a partner. They will be laughing all the way to the bank when they start delivering millions of books that were given away to them by librarians. The big question is, will access be free? I imagine so, given Google’s advertising-supported business model — I don’t think that will change. Imagine the ranges and ranges of books in large research libraries that will be totally devalued at that point.

If librarians had had enough vision and imagination and money we could have created our own full text book delivery site. OCLC might have led this, or the Library of Congress. It’s probably too late now. Our capitalist economy gives first dibs to the private sector to deliver public goods. It’s only when the private sector can’t deliver (“market failure”) that the public sector gets their turn (that’s why public libraries were invented in the mid-19th century to do what bookstores and private libraries couldn’t do to serve everyone). It doesn’t look to me like we are going to get a turn this time.

How do I know this? Look at how fast abstracting services have disappeared. People will take a full text article over an abstract any day. Logically people will take a full text book over a few pages. This will force Google to make the whole book accessible. If they dont people wont use this service and no ad revenue will be generated. With no ad revenue they lose their investment. I really dont see Google losing 100 million or so when lawsuits and lobbyist cost less.

Again I am not against Google doing this, I am just saying be ready to cut a good deal. We can not blame Google if they knock as out of our business we have done it to ourselves. We can look logically at the new environment and make use of it.

Seriously, Google’s project may be the focus of two lawsuits–but neither of those lawsuits has been decided against Google. A number of legal scholars believe that Google Library Project constitutes fair use; others disagree. Simply asserting that the project is illegal does not make it so.

Tim R.: “No one is going to use Book Search unless we encourage it.” That’s interesting…and, much as I love the field, may overstate the importance of librarian recommendations. (As for the doom of brick-and-mortar libraries: I still fail to see how making books more findable, books that generally need to be borrowed from libraries, is going to doom libraries, unless they can’t handle the demand.)

And, as usual, T Scott makes an excellent point–it’s not as though librarians were actively engaging Google on its blog.

1) Librarians are/were the one to encourage people to use Google. I remember in library school when Google was the new kid on the block and how Google was the best thing ever.

2) After we got them to the top of the Search Engine Heap we open our only resources to them for nothing. Go read/watch Pirates of Silicon Valley to see what happens next. Basically we might see brink and motor libraries go by by. I am sure all of you tech fans will be happy and thank the lord I am switching to museums. I do need a pay check.

3) Finally we are going to shoot ourselves in the foot again by being Google’s best sales reps once again. We will be the ones showing patrons the value of Google Book Search instead of the power of libraries. No one is going to use Book Search unless we encourage it. So lets try and be smarter this time.

Its going to be an interesting shoot out between OCLC/Open Content Alliance and Google. Pick your devil to sale out to now so you can get your asking price.

Too bad “the Google Five” (more like the Keating Five than the Chicago Seven, come to think of it) libraries didn’t read their own little Copyright Violation Warning signs posted near their own photocopy machines in lieu of accepting Google’s wheelbarrow full of quarters.

If any librarian honestly has an US vs. GOOGLE view, then they should step aside and start selling buggy whips, while the rest of us enjoy the fruits that Google and various other technological companies and partnerships have provided us.

The only real question I have about Google Scholar and Google Book Search is “Why the hell didn’t OCLC or some other librarian-centered organization do this years ago?”

Librarians, Jelly Beans, and Google Book Search.
(cover story)
Dillard, David.
Online
March / April 2006 v. 30 no. 2 p. 20-21

Librarians may get used by the providers of these services, but they in turn are getting resources that are not available without these databases.

David P. Dillard

Try using a tabbed search engine such as http://www.zuula.com for awhile and watch the difference in search results particularly between Yahoo and Google. It’s no good being a Google basher without evidence. The evidence is there and if a few more libraries had their default pointed at non-Google search engines with a display of reasons why you need to use more than one search engine then maybe we would have more respect in the search community. There are so many subjects where it is at least as good if not better to use an alternative search engine to Google. Expose these areas and teach the world to search more critically.

Google cannot be blamed for a lack of interest in/respect for librarians if we do not shine.

Terry K

So here we hear about librarians complaining Google dropped the ball on them a year ago. But the ALA dropped the ball on advising our nation’s libraries on how to afford CIPA compliance, then advises libraries to complain CIPA is not affordable, and this ball was dropped over five years ago.

I say the ALA’s ball droppage is far more significant than Google’s.

What we don’t need is to attack each other with sarcasm when someone doesn’t know about the work you’ve done. Because that doesn’t actually help anyone fix anything, and it rarely advances the discourse.

Google Book Search provides ways to search for items in books that no library can do by itself. It doesn’t provide the books, but–especially for obscure items (one paragraph on a topic in a 300-page book) it reveals sources that would otherwise stay hidden.

I still don’t see how this can do anything but help libraries–which is, after all, where the books are (especially the tens of millions of in-copyright, out-of-print books). How does making your collections better known hurt you?

As for the Google PR towards librarians in general–well, yes, it’s interesting that it seems to have disappeared entirely. As one who, perhaps naively, wrote a piece for the short-lived newsletter (for which I received the usual $0, but they made up for it by not even suggesting possible employment), I’m just bemused by that whole thing. (No, I never got the T-shirt either.)

But, I’m sorry, this just doesn’t follow:
“Google will continue to use librarians, scan their books, profit from it, and then leave us in the information dust to rot like an old microfilm machine.”

More access to public domain books. Full-text searching for books that only libraries can provide. How exactly does this “leave us in the information dust”?

I’m in library school and this kind of thinking disappoints me. So what if librarians were used (that is common in any other profession), if so, librarians should simply step up and use Google to their advantage.