[WEB4LIB] NPR: Google's Plan Prompts a Question: What's on the Web?

[Karen Coyle]

I actually listened to this and found it ... difficult when Brewster
Kahle was answering questions about libraries and librarians. This is
the second time that I've encountered Brewster as a representative of
our profession (the first was in Larry Lessig's book "Free Culture"). On
the radio, Brewster was asked things like: "How do librarians feel about
this?" The least he could have done was say "Well, I'm not a librarian,
but I think they...". (He didn't.) I admit that the Internet Archive is
interesting, but it's also quite flawed if viewed as a library rather
than as a computer scientist's attempt to capture everything on the net.
(In an interview a while back the interviewer asked him: How do you
catalog web pages? and he answered: "We archive the best pages."
Obviously the word "catalog" didn't mean what we think it does.) So here
it is, plain and simple:

  BREWSTER KAHLE IS NOT A LIBRARIAN!

Thanks, I had to get that off my chest.

kc

On Thu, 2004-12-16 at 11:20, Gerry Mckiernan wrote:
> Colleagues/
> 
> NPR: Google's Plan Prompts a Question: What's on the Web? 
> 
> This week, the search engine Google announced plans to digitize
> millions of library books and make them searchable online. Are we
> getting closer to the day when most of the world's knowledge is a click
> away? 
> 
> [ http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5&prgDate=current ]
> 
> Key Players  interviewed, e.g., Michael Keller (Stanford Univesrity and
> High Wire Press), Brewster Kale (Internet Archive), 
> Paul Gerhardt (BBC Creative Archive)
>  
> This is a *VERY* Important episode of _Talk of the Nation_ and  IMHO is
> a Must Hear !
> [38' 10'']
> 
> Regards,
> 
> /Gerry 
> 
> Gerry McKiernan
> GoogleScanned Librarian
> Iowa State University 
> Ames IA 50011
> 
> gerymck at iastate.edu 
-- 
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Karen Coyle
Digital Library Specialist
http://www.kcoyle.net
Ph: 510-540-7596 Fax: 510-848-3913
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