NYTimes: Questions and Praise for Google Web Library

[Gerry Mckiernan]

Questions and Praise for Google Web Library
By FELICIA R. LEE

[ http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/18/books/18libr.html ]

Published: December 18, 2004

When Randall C. Jimerson, the president of the Society of American
Archivists, heard of Google's plan to convert certain holdings at Oxford
University and at some of the leading research libraries in the United
States into digital files, freely searchable over the Web, he asked,
"What are they thinking?"

Mr. Jimerson had worries. Who would select the material? How would it
be organized and identified to avoid mountains of decontextualized
excerpts? Would Google users eventually forgo the experience of holding
a book, actually seeing a historical document, the serendipity of slow
research?
	
But in recent interviews, many scholars and librarians applauded the
announcement by Google, the operator of the world's most popular
Internet search service, to digitize some of the collections at Oxford,
the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library.

[snip]

[MUCH MORE]

/Gerry

Gerry McKiernan
Thinking Librarian 
Iowa State University
Ames IA 50011

gerrymck at iastate.edu