[Web4lib] google & library catalogs

[Ross Singer]

Strange.

Does anybody really think that Google/GBS would ever overtake Amazon as 'the
place to look for books'?

Because I find that a bit unlikely.

-Ross.

On 4/13/06, K.G. Schneider <kgs at bluehighways.com> wrote:
>
> > In a bit of a pre-coffee haze, but wondering....is there a way to save
> > this kind of search on Google, so it's available when you need it, so
> > you don't have to remember the secret handshake phrase?  I'm not likely
> > to use this often, so won't remember it, I'm sure.
>
> You can install a toolbar, courtesy of OCLC, but if Google was betting on
> paper books and real libraries, they'd implement this feature directly in
> Google itself, not leaving us to provide an add-on. In the same vein,
> they'd
> offer library findability from inside Google Book Search. (And if
> libraries
> participating in this project had a clue, they would have insisted that
> this
> be a prerequisite for participation. How good we are at contributing to
> our
> own demise.) If GBS becomes the de facto book finding aid for the body
> politic (something I don't see as long as the focus is on academic books),
> we're all hosed. I always worry we're just seeing Phase One from them.
>
> It is interesting to see Google experiment with faceting and metadata,
> after
> years of promoting search uber alles. I wonder if Ask.com is making them
> feel any heat?
>
> Karen G. Schneider
> kgs at bluehighways.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Web4lib mailing list
> Web4lib at webjunction.org
> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/
>
>