[WEB4LIB] Re: Welcome to the Schoogle Era

[Dobbs, Aaron]

I've been trying to figure out of what and where this thread reminds me.
And I just got it.  I was on a red-eye from Portland to Chicago a couple
days ago, the in-flight movie was _I Robot_ (an awful and terrible
mutation of Asimov's fabulous book) specifically, the line in there from
the CEO of the robot manufacturing company says to Will Smith's
character: 
"I bet you would have outlawed the internet to save the libraries, too!"

Googlizing library search processes will probably be the way things run
if we (libraryland denizens) continue to debate and discuss options
without agreement and implementation *large scale* and quickly.
Amazon's search inside the book & OCLC making WorldCat searchable are
only the beginning.  

What happens when a Google-like entity (or even a lone publisher) starts
making their entire publishing content available?  I posit that, similar
to the music industry, more people will download & eventually (I hope
check out (if their local library's holdings are indicted in the record)
but probably they will) buy the items (the whole shopping cart "it's so
easy to buy from the link immediately provided" ecommerce thing that
funds further development) that please them most.  

Opportunity has knocked (once again); I hope we, or enough of us, can
open the door and hold it open long enough to get enough of us onto the
boat to the brave new world.  (read whatever literary references you
want into that phrasing, I meant just about all of them)  Implementing
item record results from local library catalogs (for
patron/user/customer ease and authentication purposes) via the WorldCat
search (or something similar) needs to happen from our end, we need to
meet this monster at least halfway.

-Aaron
:-)'

Our whole American way of life is a great war of ideas, and librarians
are the arms dealers selling weapons to both sides.
-James Quinn


-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Amos Lakos
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 1:30 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Re: Welcome to the Schoogle Era

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