[Web4lib] Librarians, administrators, and Google's "library"

[B.G. Sloan]

Brian Gray said: "That question is no different than the variation we get know for journals when they say 'everything is on the web already' or for purchases through our state consortium OhioLINK."

OK, fair enough. So how DO you answer those questions?

And how would you answer this specific question from an administrator: "We just paid $xx,xxx dollars to Google for access to millions of e-books. Why to we need to keep buying books for the library?"

Bernie Sloan

--- On Thu, 9/24/09, Brian Gray <mindspiral at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Brian Gray <mindspiral at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Librarians, administrators, and Google's "library"
> To: "B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2 at yahoo.com>
> Cc: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Date: Thursday, September 24, 2009, 3:04 PM
> That question is no different than the
> variation we get know for journals when they say
> "everything is on the web already" or for
> purchases through our state consortium OhioLINK.
> 
> Brian Gray
> 
> mindspiral at gmail.com
> bcg8 at case.edu
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 12:00 PM,
> B.G. Sloan <bgsloan2 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> I'm interested in seeing what happens once the Google
> "library" is available via subscription. I can see
> some non-librarian administrators thinking "Why do we
> need to spend so much to buy library books when we have
> millions of them available through Google?"
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Has anyone been thinking about how they might answer that
> question in a way that makes sense to non-librarian
> administrators higher up on the administrative food chain?
> 
>