[WEB4LIB] RE: Google Scholar

[K.G. Schneider]

One of my concerns about Google Scholar is about the issue of the balance of
power with respect to Libraryland versus a major Walmart-style database
provider. In a competitive market, we, librarians, could get a lot of
information out of content providers by insisting we had the right to know.
I recall comparing Internet filters with licensed databases and pointing out
that we are allowed to know quite a bit about what is added, and why.
If--now this is farfetched theory, but the Walmart of Databases has come to
town, and we should think about it--Google Scholar became THE database
provider, and I could easily see this happening if funding agencies saw
Google Scholar as cheaper/easier than other types of databases, we would be
on the wrong end of the power battle.

Before you say "that could never happen," look at what happened with E-Rate,
where libraries that had fallen on their sword about intellectual freedom
suddenly "had" to filter ALL computers in their libraries in order to get
the discounted services that E-Rate dangled. This isn't even that obvious an
intellectual freedom issue (though based on how monopolies behave in
marketplaces I would say it is a very REAL if not yet REALIZED issue); in
fact, I can already (at least in my imagination) hear library directors
rationalizing that providing cheaper database access was actually laudatory
since it freed up money to use for other services (I've heard that with
filtering and with RFID, in case you think this doesn't happen), even if
cheaper meant less information and less control over what we were getting. I
am sure the clarion call of cheap content would lure quite a few sailors
into the drink. 

This is not a "die Schoogle die die die" post... just something percolating
in my brain for a few days. I just *knew* I had seen that movie. 

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com