[WEB4LIB] Re: Welcome to the Schoogle Era

[K.G. Schneider]

> Imagine if Google came up with a better
> overall funding model than hundreds of libraries
> paying a mix of agregators who
> pay a mix of publishers,
> redundantly.
> It isn't hard to imagine scenarios that
> might easily overcome our jerry-rigged
> method of e-resource brokering.
> Libraries are in the middle layer of
> something that could be made more efficient,
> maybe by eliminating the middle.
> 
> Mark J. Ludwig

I wrote Mark off-list, but then reconsidered. I'll come out of the closet,
as it were, on this one. I really see Mark's point. It's not just about
Google being a huge, well-funded company with the kind of resources we in
Libraryland will never have. LibraryLand is a feudal universe balkanized by
both type of institution and geopolitical boundaries. We suck at marketing,
and (ferbish proselytizing again) we suck at presenting content the way
people wanna and SHOULD see it, the way content is meant to be experienced.
(I heard a librarian--who had never seen a FRBR display--refer to FRBR as
"dumbing down" the catalog, and to borrow a phrase from Capote, I felt
"bubbles in my blood.")

Google, on the other hand, is an excellent example of the unified field
theory. Not to mention what a few bucks in the pocket can do. They are
certainly not organizing Committees and Task Forces to present Resolutions.
They are just doing it. 

It's worth asking if we should hitch a star to Google Scholar. On the
terrific blog It's All Good, Alane suggests that this is the End Of The
World As We Know It, and adds that she feels fine.  (I wrote the above
paragraph before reading her reference to "the big bang," and am grinning.)
I would feel fine if I felt that we were going to end up on the new world,
but I worry we'll be left behind. We can and should look at ways that Google
Scholar could help libraries crawl out of the primordial soup and begin to
develop lungs before we join the ranks of the brachiopods and the dodo
birds.

My caution: if Google becomes the Walmart of value-added content, then it
may also become the gatekeeper--like Walmart, deciding what cannot be
aggregated. 

I tell you, it's been quite a week. I haven't felt so much in the presence
of major change since the day I installed Mosaic and got Trumpet Winsock
working, and for the first time saw NASA images on my computer. 

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com