Google, Librarians, and Monopolies

Posted on August 24, 2006 by karin

So publishers are slapping lawsuits on Google in hopes of shutting down their book scanning project. And what will they accomplish? An enormous case dragging through court systems for years and costing a lot of money, and, if they win, probably declining money for themselves. This quote struck me as particularly funny:

Music publishers a century ago tried to stop the manufacture of player pianos because they feared that sales of sheet music would decline. In fact, player pianos helped increase the number of buyers of sheet music.(Washington Post)

All this nit picking and fighting, and for what? The RIAA slaps law suits on anything that breaths, yet sales continue to go up. Much like mix tapes, music sharing has facilitated the discovery and purchase of new music. (I’m sure they didn’t like mix tapes, either) Publishers should realize that the more people that can find their books, the more will buy their books. At the very least, patrons may request that their local libraries buy certain hard to find titles.

This article on The Institute for the Future of the Book brings up a good point, though:

Google, a private company, is in the process of annexing a major province of public knowledge, and we are allowing it to do so unchallenged. To call the publishers’ legal challenge a real challenge, is to misidentify what really is at stake. Years from now, when Google, or something like it, exerts unimaginable influence over every aspect of our informated lives, we might look back on these skirmishes as the fatal turning point. So that’s why I turn to the librarians. Raise a ruckus. (If:book)

I think the reasons no one has raised a ruckus is because we’re excited, we want to see where this goes, so we close our eyes blindly and hope for the best. Sometimes, it’s the best you can do. Bog down these early experiments in digitization with what-if’s and but’s, and you risk breaking the momentum. The idea of Google owning too much information, of having a monopoly on it, is a valid one, though.

At some point, and I’m not sure exactly when it was, people started turning on Google. I’ve seen quite a few articles criticizing Google and their practices as of late. That’s healthy, we should question, and, in truth, it’s about damn time we did so.

As always, I’m not sure where I stand on this. On one hand, I would like to see cooperative agreements formed, to know that knowledge won’t be used as a power bargaining chip in the future. On the other, I hate it when people get TOO nitpicky and slow down what I see as a really exciting development. Probably I’m just too impatient. But knowing that I can get something through interlibrary loan helps ease my worry, as does knowing that I have had good luck getting local libraries to buy useful books.

I also have this vague notion that libraries help other libraries. I have no actual information to back this up, and will investigate, but publicly accessible libraries, even if not publicly funded, usually get public money of some sort in the form of grants, so they’re all interconnected in a way. I’m sure my upcoming Library classes will help me with this knowledge.

One other quote:

But we’re in trouble if this is the research tool that is to replace, by force of market and by force of users’ habits, online library catalogues. That’s because no sane librarian would outsource their profession to an unaccountable private entity that refuses to disclose the workings of its system — in other words, how does Google’s book algorithm work, how are the search results ranked? And yet so many librarians are behind this plan. Am I to conclude that they’ve all gone insane? Or are they just so anxious about the pace of technological change, driven to distraction by fears of obsolescence and diminishing reach, that they are willing to throw their support uncritically behind the company, who, like a frontier huckster, promises miracle cures and grand visions of universal knowledge?(If:book)

This is pretty funny to me. My recent decision to go to get an MLS has been driven by my view that Librarians are going to be ever more useful, not less. Even if every single book were available online through Google for free, librarians would STILL be useful, because even if people can find information, they’ll always need help filtering it, and that’s something I don’t see computers being able to do just yet. It’s amazing to me to watch a good librarian access information – they may, in fact, find it on Google, but the way they can access it, evaluate it, and compile it puts computers to shame. More and more librarians are involved with the digital world and less with the actual books. I don’t think this is a bad thing, and librarians in general are concerned with getting ever more information to more people.

The next few years, perhaps decades will be very interesting to watch. Libraries are struggling to find their new roles in the new digital universe, but I have faith they won’t become obsolete. I hope that they become ever more vital- a place you go not necessarily to find information, but to share it, make sense of it, compile it, disseminate it. I hope that libraries can become a center for a new scholarship, one that’s not barred by degrees, but open to anyone with an interest.

I guess that’s enough babbling for now.

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One Response to Google, Librarians, and Monopolies

  1. Mlle. Librarian says:
    August 28, 2006 at 11:05 pm

    Thanks for your comments on my blog (and thanks for taking the trouble to register in order to comment; I think I have the template straightened out so that registration will no longer be necessary).

    Also – thank you so much for this thoughtful post – and inspiring, too, especially the last paragraph. I’m bookmarking you and will be reading with interest. Good luck with your studies!