Feds vs. Google library effort someday?

Comments:

• Garson O'Toole says:

  February 15, 2007 at 5:37 pm

  It is reasonable to wonder why the mass digitalization of written material in the U.S. is being conducted by Google and by an alliance of non-profit and for-profit organizations called the Open Content Alliance.
  Other groups could do it and indeed they might do it in the future. For example, a coalition of libraries under the umbrella of the American Library Association might perform a mass digitalization project. The Library of Congress (LOC) might perform such a project. (LOC has already digitized millions of objects as part of the American Memory project .)

  Part of the explanation I think comes from the expressed attitudes of the leadership of the ALA and the head of the Library of Congress during key periods while digitalization was under discussion. Consider the opinions excerpted below from the President of the ALA that appeared in a Wall Street Journal article from November 2005:

  Other librarians are more strongly opposed to the Google project. “I feel that this is a potential disaster on several levels,” said Michael Gorman, president of the American Library Association and university librarian at California State University, Fresno. “They are reducing scholarly texts to paragraphs. The point of a scholarly text is they are written to be read sequentially from beginning to end, making an argument and engaging you in dialogue.”

  Mr. Gorman, who said the American Library Association doesn’t have an official position on the subject, described Google’s argument that Web users will be able to look at several snippets and then decide whether they want to buy or read the book as “ridiculous.” Further, he noted that as a published author, he opposes Google’s intention to build an enormous database that includes copyrighted texts. “It’s a flaunting of my intellectual property rights,” he said.

  Consider the viewpoint expressed by the Librarian of Congress, James Billington in 2000

  Billington elaborated on why the Library will not put books online during the question and answer session. “The rationale is two fold. We have so much special format material that nobody has seen that it is more important to get those out.” He added that the Library is more concerned with “rare pamphlets” than “full books”.”Secondly, behind this … is an implicit belief [that books] are not going to be replaced, and should not be replaced. There is a difference between turning pages and scrolling down,” he said. “There is something about a book that should inspire a certain presumption of reverence.”

  “We should be very hesitant … that you are going to get everything you want electronically. You don’t want to be one of those mindless futurists,” said Billington, “who sit in front of a lonely screen. It is isolating. It is a lonely thing.” In contrast, “libraries are places, a community thing. It is dangerous to promote the illusion that you can get anything you want by sitting in front of a computer screen.” He described this as “arrogance” and “hubris”.

  It is important to note that the leadership has changed at the ALA. But there is always considerable inertia in large organizations and deeply-held attitudes typically change only slowly.