Comments on: How Google Used Librarians…and Got Away With It

By: Tim Reynolds

Tim Reynolds — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:50:50 +0000

Common sense interpretation of copyright law? I do not think thats actually ever been done. On top of the constant misuse of the law with enough money you can get any law changed. Oh America the Beautiful. If you don’t believe me look at what’s going on with the digital copyright laws. In the 2000 they where pro-writers just this year tthe rullings were changed giving publishers the right to reprint articles/photos in other formats. What we should learn from this is that copyright law is neither static nor has commonsense .

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.

By: Laurel

Laurel — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:29:43 +0000

Google? You can’t read, download, print or even cut an dpsate most books….it’s a great TOC service. Google Scholar is OK- but not for real research, good for very unique, nice to after true research in indexes. I am really confused by the fear of Google….they are really one big tease. A library gives it away for free,all of it.

By: pjkwik

pjkwik — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:48:15 +0000

As a librarian, I say: who cares? The Google project has opened up the possibilities with books on the internet, and has brought that to millions of people.

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

By: wpk

wpk — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:41:00 +0000

still just gotta wonder how that “number of legal scholars” (both of them paid for by the google?) is going to get around a common-sense interpretation of:

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

By: Jim Scheppke

Jim Scheppke — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:49:57 +0000

I agree with Tim. Google’s ultimate business plan is to be able to deliver the full text of books — public domain books and books not in the public domain. Their strategy for the latter might be to support “orphan works” legislation the the Congress that would unlock a lot of post-1923 content. ALA is working on this too — another example of librarians giving Google the rope to hang us with?

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.

By: Tim Reynolds

Tim Reynolds — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:25:44 +0000

Well I think most people do not see Google stopping at finding the book. You can talk about helping with the long tail all you want. They are going to need a product soon enough.

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.

By: David Bigwood

David Bigwood — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:52:26 +0000

Steve, they were listening. Check out http://tinyurl.com/62lfv7 New newsletter today.

By: walt crawford

walt crawford — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:11:48 +0000

“Seriously, itâ€™s pretty simple: copying in-copyright books cover-to-cover without permission is illegal. ”

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.

By: T Scott

T Scott — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:08:44 +0000

I just went through all of the postings on the Librarian Central Blog and was struck by how very few comments there were (and none, as far as I can tell, from the bloggers who seem most distressed and taken advantage of). Perhaps the Google folks decided that since librarians didn’t seem very interested in engaging with them on the blog that it wasn’t worth the time and energy that they were putting into it. One way of looking at this is that Google made a good faith effort to develop a stronger relationship with the library community through the blog and the newsletter and the librarian community didn’t step up.

By: Tim Reynolds

Tim Reynolds — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:40:19 +0000

I am with Martin Courtois, we should have arranged more grants or other compensation. While I agree that as a whole the world community will benefit from Google’s project as a profession we shot ourselves in the foot big time not just once, not twice but three times.

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.