Earlier we ran Google’s privatization of knowledge: Do-no-evil company said to control almost 90 percent of digibook world, my post citing media expert Siva Vaidhyanathan‘s concerns.
Now, speaking unofficially, a Google staffer outside the book-scanning operation has replied to me. I like that. I wish Amazon employees would do the same when I gripe about the Kindle‘s DRM and eBabel. Different sides in various debates can learn from each other, just so no one hides corporate ties. It reflects very well on Google that Nick Johnson felt free to share his personal opinions. Nick’s big point is that, yes, the paper library books will continue to be available for others to digitize.
Safeguarding bits: Google’s future leadership question—and my own little brush with apparent corporate censorship at Publishers Weekly
Just the same, it still scares me that Google, even with stellar leadership, controls so much of our cultural heritage as expressed in ones and zeros. Can we be certain that the people at the top of Google will always be as enlightened as CEO Eric Schmidt or Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the two cofounders (2003 photo)? Even under them, Google is not perfect. Isn’t that something to ponder in deciding whether Google should replace libraries or at least reduce their importance?
Gasp, corporate censorship happens (regardless of information companies’ protests that playing with data would be bad for their credibility, so shouldn’t we trust Megaconglomerate, Inc., etc.?). I may know firsthand about the supposedly impossible. Publishers Weekly in March 2008 zapped my E-Book Report blog. Tens of thousands of words, probably more than 30,000, vanished without explanation.
E-Book Report was not Madame Bovary, but covered topics about which PW often has been excruciatingly clueless, such as the details of the DRM and eBabel debate and E vs. P. Some of my writings criticized Amazon. PW just might getting some nice licensing revenue for constant use of blurbs from its reviews. I’d welcome specifics from PW about the size of its Amazon payments, if any.
Whatever the reason, office politics, differences of opinion or worse, PW betrayed the trust of its readers and of the Web sites that had linked to E-Book Report. I’d hope that today’s Google, as the ultimate custodian of links, would never sin in such a way; but who’s to say about the future—hence the relevance of my experiences with PW, an arm of another info-related company that touts its good intentions and credibility.
Publishers Weekly: The equivalent of The Times in 1984?
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Big Brother’s minions corrupted the contents of The Times to suit the government’s whims of the moment. To a lesser extent, is the same mindset at work at PW? Sara Nelson, editor of this bible of the publishing trade, still has yet to explain the deletion of the e-book blog’s posts, along with the archives of blogs by the former publisher and the woman who hired me. On the surface the disappearance of my 30,000 or so words was totally illogical. PW in fact deprived itself of pages on which it could post ads. Next time PW runs an anti-censorship editorial, might this be something for readers to ponder? The word "censorship" is subjective, of course. But in the absence of other explanations of the archives’ disappearance, what else can I conclude?
None other than the former president of Bowker complained in the EBR comment area just before PW pressed the DEL key, coincidentally or not. He said the cessation of the the e-book blog showed that PW was becoming increasing increasingly irrelevant. Worse, perhaps? Untrustworthy? Those questions—no more than that—are mine. The longer PW refuses to provide a meaningful explanation of the mass deletion, the more curious and suspicious I’ll be.
Strange happenings at a company trusted by the library world
Asked why PW shut down the blog in the first place, PW’s only explanation was that it rethinking its Web strategy and wanted to clear space for new features. PW admitted that the e-book blog was well received and was pulling in enough readers. But even if not, that doesn’t explain why PW would wipe out even the archives, which, in terms of the home page, would require no extra space, not one bit.
Remember, moreover, that we’re not talking about a dinky little trade publication existing in isolation. PW is among the properties owned by Reed Elsevier, the giant conglomerate trusted by many thousands of librarians, as well as governments and, yes, other corporations. Photo is of a Reed Elsevier Building (Holland headquarters of this Ango-Dutch company?).
Along with Library Journal and many other Reed Business Information magazines, PW is for sale. Let’s hope the next buyer will insist on more ethical treatment of blog archives. I’d love to know how Marcia Balisciano, Reed Elsevier’s director of corporate responsibility, would feel about the bizarre deletion of content that PW had earlier invited others to link to. How would she explain PW’s apparent censorship to librarians? Or the anti-social conduct by common Web standards? Reed Elsevier’s Web site quotes Ms. Balisciano as saying: "Corporate responsibility may be called social responsibility, sustainability, ethics or governance. But, by whatever name it’s known, at Reed Elsevier we believe it means living up to our responsibility to positively contribute to our employees, customers, society and the environment in the conduct of our business." Ah! The do-no-evil routine, Reed Elsevier style! That said, I’d love to see Marcia Balisciano, in line with her title, ask PW for a paper trail of everything related to the killing of both the e-book blog and its archives. I’ll keep an open mind. Maybe she’ll surprise me.
All the more scary: No follow-up by others in the media
Meanwhile not one publication, Net-based or not, has delved into why PW tried to turn me, ex-publisher David Nudo and former deputy publisher Karen Holt into nonpeople—all the more reason to challenge the idea of letting corporations act as libraries without other alternatives available, real libraries included.
Remember the number in the headline of the my earlier post. Almost 90 percent of the digibook world. I hope that librarians and others will learn from PW’s apparent censorship of me and look ahead to the time when a much larger information company, Google, just might not be as professionally run as it is today. By themselves, we cannot trust media conglomerates, other corporations or governments to safeguard data or care about its disappearance. Here’s to a balanced approach!
Related: Siva Vaidhyanathan’s main blog, Sivacracy.net, along with another of his, The Googlization of Everything. Also see my earlier posts headlined "How Google used librarians…and got away with it" (based on librarian Steve Cohen’s original item) and Google library blog closes: Monthly newsletter to replace it.
Usual reminder: I own a tiny speck of Google as a retirement investment and am now running Google-supplied advertisements in the TeleBlog. Same for ads from Amazon. I continue to see major positives in both companies, as well in in PW despite the serious ethical issues that have arisen from its apparent censorship of me.
Image credit: CC-licensed Reed Elsevier Building photo by marcaprice.
“Just the same, it still scares me that Google, even with stellar leadership, controls so much of our cultural heritage as expressed in ones and zeros.”
How does Google control our cultural heritage? They are scanning books. Anyone else is also free to scan books. How does Googles’s possession of scans of books control much of anything?
Google has a search engine – arguably the largest and most widely used but there are over 100 other search engines many of which give much better targeted results. Anyone is free to create/develop a search engine.
I must be missing something here.
Hi, HeavyG. It’s the deals with libraries and the massive scanning operation that matter here. Google is the boss. Why is Google, rather than a group of libraries, be in charge here? Google instead should be a contractor. For First Amendment reasons, I love the idea of private alternatives outside the library system, but it’s a bit too much turning over so much to Google. Just the way I see things. Thanks for your comments. David
Contractors get paid, however, isn’t Google funding these massive scanning efforts? I think libraries are just offering convenient access to their collections. Google could just buy copies of all these books but that seems like such a waste of time and money when they can instead just access existing collections.
It’s not as if whatever books they scan are no longer available to anyone else via other existing copies be they paper or digital.
But HG, if Google does it for free, it can more easily impose conditions that shackle the books.
I will say in fairness to Google that we’re getting into major questions of national priorities. Why isn’t the money available for the libraries to undertake the arrangements I’ve suggested?
Google’s digitizing the books with certain conditions imposed is better than no one doing it, but, really, the money ought to be there.
Thanks,
David