[WEB4LIB] RE: Google Scholar

[David Dorman]

Let's take a deep breath, step back, and get some perspective on Google 
Scholar.

There are many factors involved in whether one views Google's entry into 
the periodical content market as a threat or an opportunity for 
libraries.  The issues are not simple and the outcomes are far from obvious.

Some of the factors are economic.  You can't ignore the interests of the 
content providers when trying to figure out how this new Google service 
will affect libraries.  If the companies and societies that control content 
are fearful that Google Scholar use cannot increase their revenues more 
than they will drop if libraries cease buying access via current providers, 
then those who control content will not allow that content to be accessible 
via Google Scholar for long. Either that, or library users will demand that 
libraries continue to purchase access through traditional vendors because 
using Google Scholar means, if Google charges for content access, that the 
cost burden will fall on them as individuals.  If Google does not charge, 
then they will not be able to pay the content providers enough to make it 
worth their while to provide content.

Much of Google's business model seems to revolve around exposing 
individuals to advertisements, thereby getting ad revenue from 
advertisers.  It may also involve gathering information on its users and 
either using that information to market products to those users or to sell 
that information to others.  This model may or may not work for Google 
Scholar, but it does not meet the revenue needs of those who control 
content.  Currently, the access and content providers that libraries deal 
with market to institutions, from which they get substantial 
revenues.  None of them have successfully made a market selling directly to 
individuals.  Technology can change extraordinarily rapidly, but cultures 
built on ways of behaving and established relationships change much more 
slowly.

Then there are a host of technical issues involving the effectiveness of 
searching via Google Scholar vs. searching a system that was designed with 
a library market in mind.  No one who has the vaguest notion of what makes 
for effective searching would ignore metadata to the extent that Google 
Scholar does, or would not distinguish between searching content and 
searching metadata.  There are also many interface issues that libraries 
and vendors are grappling with as the simultaneous searching of multiple 
resources becomes more and more common that Google Scholar does not address.

Google may be filled with many talented and knowledgeable developers, but 
the initial product they have put out to the public ignores one hell of a 
lot of institutionalized wisdom that library-oriented systems have built 
into them, both in terms of metadata standards and interface design.  I 
have no doubt the developers working at Google could be fast learners, but 
the evidence so far is that they are not even aware that a lot of useful 
searching technology and valuable experience exists outside of their own 
magic kingdom.

I have seen lots of smart and technically savvy people in libraries make 
some very foolish decisions because they were supremely self confident and 
yet completely naive about many matters they needed to know about in order 
to make sound technology decisions.  Such folks don't often look outside 
their own "superior" culture for guidance or knowledge.  If the folks at 
Google share some of this hubris, they may have a rocky road trying to 
dominate the electronic access to scholarly material that libraries are 
providing with increasing effectiveness.

Even if the folks at Google figure out that they have a lot of learning to 
do, and start doing it--and even if they find a way to begin to either 
adopt the institution-based approach to marketing or change the existing 
culture and economic relations that have grown up around current library 
services--it will be several years before some existing electronic library 
services become anachronisms.  And that will be time enough for both 
libraries and many of their software vendors and content providers to adopt 
to the changes that will be occurring.

One thing we can say with certainty at this point, is that Google Scholar 
will be an enormous influence in how libraries will evolve their electronic 
information services, just as Google itself has been.  Another thing we can 
say with certainty is that the evolution of electronic library services 
will speed up as they are increasingly challenged from services like Google 
Scholar that come from outside the profession.  Everything else, at this 
point, is speculation.  A key element to watch as the Google Scholar 
service unfolds is the reactions of researchers who try to use the service 
to meet their information needs.  Other key elements are how the 
relationships between Google and the content providers evolve, how Google 
begins to position the service in its marketing, and the functional 
evolution of the service.

I think if we librarians and library supporters keep the panic at bay and 
keep quality service to library users uppermost in our minds, we will be 
able to find opportunities to serve our users even better than we do 
now.  So by all means lets look closely and carefully at Google Scholar, 
but at the same time lets hold off on the panic induced doomsday 
prognostications for a few months until we've gotten a little more perspective.

David

At 01:42 PM 11/23/2004, K.G. Schneider wrote:
>One of my concerns about Google Scholar is about the issue of the balance of
>power with respect to Libraryland versus a major Walmart-style database
>provider. In a competitive market, we, librarians, could get a lot of
>information out of content providers by insisting we had the right to know.
>I recall comparing Internet filters with licensed databases and pointing out
>that we are allowed to know quite a bit about what is added, and why.
>If--now this is farfetched theory, but the Walmart of Databases has come to
>town, and we should think about it--Google Scholar became THE database
>provider, and I could easily see this happening if funding agencies saw
>Google Scholar as cheaper/easier than other types of databases, we would be
>on the wrong end of the power battle.
>
>Before you say "that could never happen," look at what happened with E-Rate,
>where libraries that had fallen on their sword about intellectual freedom
>suddenly "had" to filter ALL computers in their libraries in order to get
>the discounted services that E-Rate dangled. This isn't even that obvious an
>intellectual freedom issue (though based on how monopolies behave in
>marketplaces I would say it is a very REAL if not yet REALIZED issue); in
>fact, I can already (at least in my imagination) hear library directors
>rationalizing that providing cheaper database access was actually laudatory
>since it freed up money to use for other services (I've heard that with
>filtering and with RFID, in case you think this doesn't happen), even if
>cheaper meant less information and less control over what we were getting. I
>am sure the clarion call of cheap content would lure quite a few sailors
>into the drink.
>
>This is not a "die Schoogle die die die" post... just something percolating
>in my brain for a few days. I just *knew* I had seen that movie.
>
>Karen G. Schneider
>kgs at bluehighways.com

David Dorman
US Marketing Manager, Index Data
125 Mt. Vernon Street
Middletown, Connecticut  06457
dorman at indexdata.com
860-389-1568 or toll free 866-489-1568
fax: 860-346-1237 or +45 3341 0101

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