[Web4lib] A Library to Last Forever - NY Times OpEd piece on GoogleBook Search

Mon Oct 12 12:48:57 EDT 2009

Kudos on tying all of that together so nicely! Fedora, indeed!!! *grin*

I absolutely see your point and I agree that digitization is by and
large a useful and in some cases essential means of expanding access,
and if Mr. Brin's assertion bore any resemblance to what you describe,
I'd concede it as a valid point.  However, he goes well beyond special
collections and contends that this is the norm for out of print books:

"Today, if you want to access a typical out-of-print book, you have only
one choice — fly to one of a handful of leading libraries in the
country and hope to find it in the stacks."

While it is true that there are out-of-print books that have fallen out
of *every* lending library, I would hardly characterize that as
"typical".

I'm fine with him making the case about how digitization can improve
access, and I completely agree that there is a case to be made.  I
simply think we've become inured to exaggeration and spin for the sake
of making an argument appear stronger, and I think that we do not do
ourselves or each other (or the end product) any favor by doing so.

Keith Engwall
Head of Library Systems and Technology
Catawba College Library
kengwall at catawba.edu
http://www.lib.catawba.edu

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.  Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx

----- Original Message -----
From: "Campbell, James (jmc)" <jmc at virginia.edu>
Sent: Mon, 10/12/2009 10:28am
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] A Library to Last Forever - NY Times OpEd piece on	GoogleBook Search

The grizzled man with the fedora is a great image, but Mr. Brin does in fact have a point about people needing to travel. Every day people walk into our special collections library after travelling across the country or across an ocean. The tomes are not long lost, the folks in the Small Library know just where to find them, but some of the patrons are grizzled and there's the occasional fedora. Whips I haven't seen, I don't know if we have a policy on that.

Explicit in Google's deal with the Bavarian State Library and in their proposal to the National Library of France and implicit in the actions of many of their US partner libraries is the idea that Google will take care of the basics, allowing the libraries to concentrate their own resources on making their (more or less) unique materials available in digital form.  And as an aside, the system we developed to keep track of those digital resources is called -- Fedora.

      - Jim Campbell

      Digital Access Librarian | Librarian for German
      University of Virginia Library | Charlottesville, VA 22904-4112

      513 Alderman | campbell at virginia.edu | 434-924-4985

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Engwall, Keith D
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2009 9:41 AM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] A Library to Last Forever - NY Times OpEd piece on GoogleBook Search

Woops!!! Correction: I find it hard to believe BOTH Mr. Brin AND the NY Times editorial
staff are completely ignorant of the concept of Interlibrary Loan.

Heh.. sorry about that!

Keith Engwall
Head of Library Systems and Technology
Catawba College Library
kengwall at catawba.edu
http://www.lib.catawba.edu

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.  Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx

----- Original Message -----
From: "Engwall, Keith D" <kengwall at catawba.edu>
Sent: Mon, 10/12/2009 9:26am
To: K.G. Schneider <kgs at bluehighways.com> ; 'B.G. Sloan' <bgsloan2 at yahoo.com> ; web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] A Library to Last Forever - NY Times OpEd piece on GoogleBook Search

Sadly, it's not so much that they're too big to be fact-checked but rather that facts are no longer deemed relevant.  Take another example from the same article -- the necessity to fly to distant libraries to acquire long lost tomes, nearly eliciting images of a little red line moving along a map and a grizzled patron with perfunctory fedora and whip -- I find it hard to believe neither Mr. Brin nor the NY Times editorial staff are completely ignorant of the concept of Interlibrary Loan.

But this follows a distinct societal trend away from honest, thoughtful discourse in favor of marketing -- simply making an argument for the sake of how well it will track with the target audience or how much attention it will garner -- without regard for accuracy or fear of correction.  Since, as far as public perception is concerned, there are no "reliable sources" anymore (and can you blame them? Even the NY Times will publish a glorified corporate press release and call it an Op Ed article), all sources become suspect and people simply fall in line behind whichever voice they find to be most compelling.

How's that for a cheery thought on a Monday morning?

Keith Engwall
Head of Library Systems and Technology
Catawba College Library
kengwall at catawba.edu
http://www.lib.catawba.edu

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.  Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx

----- Original Message -----
From: K.G. Schneider <kgs at bluehighways.com>
Sent: Sat, 10/10/2009 7:21am
To: 'B.G. Sloan' <bgsloan2 at yahoo.com> ; web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] A Library to Last Forever - NY Times OpEd piece on GoogleBook Search

> Sergey Brin, co-founder and technology president of Google, has an opinion
> piece on Google Book Search in the NY Times:
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/opinion/09brin.html
> 
> Bernie Sloan
> 

As I've pointed out in other forums (Twitter, Facebook), you can kibosh the
tearjerking example of the Stanford report that is no more with a quick
WorldCat search, which surfaces 4 copies. Since WorldCat is a subset of
all-the-books-that-are, it's possible there are even more copies than that.
I don't dispute the reality that books disappear and digitization is
important (by... someone...), but it's a pretty amazing thing to be too big
to be fact-checked.

Karen G. Schneider

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