image Google‘s one of my favorite companies. In fact, I own a tiny speck of it for retirement purposes.

So at least as a small shareholder, let me gripe—loudly—if a report in Library Stuff is on target. I suspect it is.

"One year ago today, Google Librarian Central blog was updated," LS’s Steve Cohen writes in How Google used imagelibrarians…and got away with it. "There hasn’t been another blog post since. That’s 365 days of no public communication with the librarian community. I’ve also asked around and found out that Google did not have an exhibit at ALA this year. The last Google Librarian Newsletter was in May of 2007."

I’d love to hear Google’s side—and see what if anything it’ll do in response to Steve’s gripes. Or did Google just enlist librarians’ support for its digitization schemes, then decide it could ignore them?

Especially with Microsoft out of the picture, Google needs to show an interest in libraries and librarians beyond the profit opportunities alone. What happened to the do-no-evil approach? And can’t that also include do-some-good? Just how can Google serve librarians well by killing the blog and not exhibiting at ALA? Or are there replacement activities I don’t know about?

The bigger picture: This is one more reason why we need a mix of business models—including a well-stocked national digital library system—rather than entrusting everything to Google, Amazon and the like. You can bet that if Amazon cranks up a major library effort, it, too, could seduce librarians, then abandon certain support efforts. Not to pick on Google alone!

More—on why Steve feels used: "Google realized that in order to index the world’s data, they needed access to the billions of books held in libraries throughout the world.  So, their marketing department (those sly dogs) decided to buddy up with ALA and the entire library community to gain access to these print treasures so that they can scan and index them.   Before realizing that they needed to do this, Google didn’t chat with librarians directly since the early days of the service (circa 1996-1998), as they needed us then as well.

"Am I angry with Google for using librarians?  A bit.

"But even more, I’m disappointed in librarians who actually fell for this blatant marketing scheme.  Did they really think that this relationship would continue?  Did they grasp the importance of what Google was/is doing?  Will they fight back?  Or will they fit the stereotype that librarians are passive and let yet another company walk all over them?  I hope they won’t, but then again, I won’t be surprised if they do…"

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3 COMMENTS

  2. I wonder if this is a bit of a side effect of their experimentation culture. Visit Google labs, and you will find that it has been pretty dormant recently (one new entry in the last year).

    In fact, their excellent google sync product for Firefox has been abandoned. I suspect that in this case its a situation where Google’s famed policy of experimentation led to Google sync, but since its not an official product it was never supported.

    I’ve noticed a few similar things around Google. Bottom line, is that there is a reason for Google’s endless Beta’s. They try out lots of things. However, there is a chance that you will find that any given feature/service will disappear as their priorities shift and evolve.

    The good news is Google has constant innovation and new features. The bad news is that you really can’t depend on any specific feature over the long run.
    Michael

  3. Michael–excellent points as usual! The problem is that librarians are used to things hanging around. I don’t think the experimenters at Google understand the culture of librarianship. I’m not a librarian myself but I can vouch for their being partial toward permanence, especially on matters affecting them.

    Thanks,
    David

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