[WEB4LIB] Re: Welcome to the Schoogle Era

[Terence K. Huwe]

Friends--

Though I don't regard Google as an "enemy" whatsoever, the adage "keep your 
friends close, but your enemies closer" applies in this case.  Google has a 
successful history of offering freebie indexing (such as used on my Web, 
www.iir.berkeley.edu) and we got used to it.  In the context of helping 
students and faculty study and work the way they want to, I think 
collaboration is in order.  Policy makers in big research institutions and 
at ARL ought to see an opportunity here--the Google "brand" is ubiquitous, 
and perhaps we can advance our own "brands", services and identities by 
actively partnering with Google.

Google makes news at a faster rate than ARL or the Mellon Foundation, and 
so there may be an opportunity here for digital libraries to use a Google 
partnership to make themselves distinctive.  The media are susceptible to 
compelling ideas, new formats for old-fashioned stanchions of society, and 
they are looking for a scoop.  Do we have any ideas on how information can 
be managed, and how people fail to find what they need?  Do we have any 
experience balancing the "Googling" public with the rigors of 
scholarship?  Hmmm, sounds like news to me... we might have some strategic 
knowledge that Google needs more than we need Google.   :-)   TH




At 11:29 AM 11/18/2004, you wrote:
>Go Karen Go -
>I am coming out of the shadows as well on this one:
>
>Google Scholar is just the first new service that is designed to make
>search and access to scholarly digital resources more SIMPLE.
>
>And it is not about Libraries Only. The future is about making all
>computing and information transfer and use - more simple.
>
>Read the Oct 30, 2004 issue of the Economist for a fascinating
>survey on "the conquest of complexity" - and as far as I am concerned,
>librarians should welcome these developments and not feel threatened
>by them - in any case they are coming - with our blessings or without.
>
>Read - Survey: Make it simple;
>The Economist. London: Oct 30, 2004.Vol.373, Iss. 8399;  pg. 4
>Available full text from ABIInform....
>
>Amos
>
>--On Thursday, November 18, 2004 10:27 AM -0800 "K.G. Schneider"
><kgs at bluehighways.com> wrote:
>
> >> 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
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>Amos Lakos
>Librarian, Rosenfeld Management Library
>UCLA - Anderson School of Management
>110 Westwood Plaza, Box 951460
>Los Angeles, CA 90095-1460
>Phone: (310) 794-4381
>Fax: (310) 825-4835
>E-mail: aalakos at library.ucla.edu
>Web: http://personal.anderson.ucla.edu/amos.lakos/index.html

Terry Huwe
2004-2005 President,
Librarians Association of the University of California
http://www.ucop.edu/lauc

Director of Library and Information Resources
Institute of Industrial Relations
University of California, Berkeley
Voice:  (510) 643-7061
Fax:  (510) 642-6432
http://iir.berkeley.edu