Wednesday 5 May 2010

Google Book Settlement

I am speaking on the Google Book Settlement next Tuesday for ten minutes without hestitation, repetition or deviation, and without Powerpoint. I am there because I am a librarian. Now read on . . .

I am seeking your help, mainly because this once worked wonderfully well when I had a similar gig (but only 3 minutes) to speak, as the librarian, about the Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales was the featured speaker, and the panel were the support acts. Alas, Sergey Brin won't be with us next week.

I'm broadly in favour of Google Books and the book settlement  - more access, more information, more digital stuff for everyone. But what do you think?



4 comments:

Kathryn Greenhill said...

:) Nice gig..

You are probably already aware of ABC Radio National's Rear Vision program on 21 January that gave the story so far with google books from an Australian perspective, but if not it is well worth checking out: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/rearvision/stories/2010/2797085.htm

Basically agree with google books being A Good Thing. A Better Thing would be if libraries had cooperated together to create an archive like this - together we had the resources ... but ...

... my major concern is having our content sold back to us for an unfair price. I don't mind a fair price for convenience of it being online and in the digital paths of our users .... this is better access than libraries currently provide.

I do think that libraries not seeing this opportunity has weakened our power as a non-partisan protector of freedom of expression. By allowing access to go through a company who is motivated by advertising dollars (and online and visible is 100x the convenience we can provide) - I think we have compromised what we protect.

But what is done is done and we need to get on and work out how best to add value to the google archive for our users - if we can at all...

Derek Whitehead said...

Thanks Kathryn - that's very helpful. I generally agree - we can be too pedantic about the ideal situation. Of course, the fact that it doesn't apply at this stage in Australia is a dampener on our enthusiasm.

Romany said...

Yes, I'm in favour of it too.

As Kathryn said, it's a shame that instead of creating an archive like this, libraries (some, not all, of course) joined the alliance *against* Google. But libraries were there in the beginning: it all started because in 2004 Google entered into digitisation agreements with a couple of American libraries.

Yes, Google is motivated by profit, but so were the authors and publishers who claimed copyright infringement (ok, maybe they were also motivated by altruism, but then Google claimed they were protecting cultural heritage too!?)

I'm not sure if it has ever been "our" content. Libraries have always had to pay: books, databases, periodical subscriptions. Maybe they'll feed it back to us with advertising on the sidebars and we'll get it for free!

Derek Whitehead said...

Thanks Romany. There are some protections in the Google Book Settlement, especially in the provision that the goal is "broad access."