[Web4lib] Google Debuts 200 Year News Archive Search

[Jonathan Rochkind]

I wouldn't assume that ProQuest is intentionally working around allowing 
subscribing institutions to access their subscriptions. It's possible. 
But there may be some other rationale for the technical decisions, they 
may not have been taken to spite us.

Link resolver integration could theoretically solve this 
regardless---google doesn't need to point to the 'appropriate copy' for 
our users, that's the job of the link resolver to resolve. 
Theoretically. If it could be gotten to work.

But if proquest doing something different would help, then you should 
talk to proquest. They shouldn't be trying to charge our users for 
something we've already paid for for them. But proquest is just one of 
many destinations that will show up on the google archived news results. 
(I think you can get results to nytimes.com for instance---even though 
the contents will also be included in proquest's national newspapers 
(for instance), sure.)

Jonathan

Rudy Leon wrote:
> It's not just a link resolver issue -- it sounds like ProQuest is 
> actively
> working around allowing subscribing institutions to access their
> subscriptions when using the google news search process. If ProQuest 
> allowed
> google to publish the link to a standard ProQuest database, our users 
> could
> access those articles to which the library has subscription access. By
> having it in this 'archiver" address, we are shut out.
>
> Oh and wouldn't it be lovely if that other major news database allowed
> article-level linking? We can't really blame Google for that quirk.
>
> On 9/6/06, Jonathan Rochkind <rochkind at jhu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> How can we and Google make this work with our link resolvers to direct
>> patrons to content we already pay for, like Google Scholar does?
>>
>> A big problem is that our databases most likely to contain newspaper
>> content do not work that well with link resolver linking (not
>> neccesarily allowing article level linking). But at least it would
>> notify the user that they could get the content for free. Is the user
>> willing to pay $5 to avoid dealing with our bad interfaces? Possibly.
>>
>> Another problem is that public libraries probably don't have link
>> resolvers right now. I think they soon will need to.
>>
>> A final potential problem is that Google's publisher partners may not be
>> happy about Google directing users away from their revenue stream, and
>> Google may not be willing to make them unhappy in this way.
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>

-- 
Jonathan Rochkind, MLIS
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886 
rochkind at jhu.edu