[Web4lib] google & library catalogs

[K.G. Schneider]

> In a bit of a pre-coffee haze, but wondering....is there a way to save
> this kind of search on Google, so it's available when you need it, so
> you don't have to remember the secret handshake phrase?  I'm not likely
> to use this often, so won't remember it, I'm sure.

You can install a toolbar, courtesy of OCLC, but if Google was betting on
paper books and real libraries, they'd implement this feature directly in
Google itself, not leaving us to provide an add-on. In the same vein, they'd
offer library findability from inside Google Book Search. (And if libraries
participating in this project had a clue, they would have insisted that this
be a prerequisite for participation. How good we are at contributing to our
own demise.) If GBS becomes the de facto book finding aid for the body
politic (something I don't see as long as the focus is on academic books),
we're all hosed. I always worry we're just seeing Phase One from them. 

It is interesting to see Google experiment with faceting and metadata, after
years of promoting search uber alles. I wonder if Ask.com is making them
feel any heat? 

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com