What's in a Name?
W hat's in a Name?
Steven Shapiro 0 1
0 Montclair State University
1 by Bob Holley, Professor, Library & Information Science Program, Wayne State University , Detroit, MI 48202; Phone: 313-577-4021; Fax: 313-577-7563
Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation
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Three Cheers for the Google Books Project!
I’d compare the Google Books Project to
efforts to settle the American West in the 19th
century. If I’m remembering my history
correctly, the railroads received massive land grants
from the government but would make money
from these grants only if they sold the land to
settlers. The railroads then convinced settlers to
migrate to the Great Plains, often through
overoptimistic descriptions. The railroads may have
profited unfairly from the government largess
and may have even bribed some government
officials to do so, but the government achieved
its objective of populating the plains.
In the same fashion, Google may be setting
itself up to gain exorbitant future profits, may
be trampling on authors rights, may be
eliminating future competitors, and may be guilty of
wholesale copyright violations; but Google is
getting the job done. I don’t see any
competitors even on the distant horizon. What other
entity has the goal of digitizing human
knowledge? Libraries, of course, but they don’t have
the money and certainly can’t expect sufficient
grant funding from the federal government
that has enough problems with the current
economy. If I were a Google stockholder, I
might even ask questions at the next annual
meeting because this investment is a risky bet
that may take many years to valorize.
I haven’t yet read any comparisons between
Google Books and the creation of numerous
major microform sets from the 1950s to the
1980s. (My Google search suggests that none
exists.) The vendors selected various projects
of greater or lesser importance, found the items
to film, produced the film/fiche/micro-opaque
copies, and sent their salespeople out to pitch
the sets to the academic library community. I
am almost certain that the libraries that
provided the items for filming received some benefits
from the filming, at the minimum, a free copy
of the set. While this filming didn’t involve
the legal complexities of the current operation
since virtually all the materials weren’t covered
by copyright partly because many publishers
filmed materials included in retrospective
bibliographies of older publications but also
because the reach of copyright didn’t extend as
far into the past as it does today. Other
companies could have created competing versions
of the same product. Imagine this taunt: “Our
version of Early English Books is better than
your version of Early English Books.” The
companies, of course, didn’t compete because
such duplication wasn’t economically viable.
Perhaps I’m naïve, but I don’t see the need
for a competing project. As I said above, I
certainly haven’t identified any other
corporation that would undertake it. If librarians
have created registers of microform masters to
avoid duplication in preservation microfilming,
why is it so important to duplicate digital
versions? If the settlement is finally signed and
passes Department of Justice scrutiny, Google
might be
willing to look at
creative ways
t o i n c r e a s e
sales by
making available
subsets of the digital archives for specific
purposes. I could see some use in
identifying, just as an example, Core Resources in
Political Science. Subject experts in the field
would select the titles. A library could buy
them in the same way that they used to buy
major microform sets. Google might create
the sets itself or might license such sales to
third parties. Finally, I don’t see any reason
why companies or individuals couldn’t produce
bibliographies based upon the Google holdings
to be used by libraries for specific acquisitions
purposes. I don’t think that doing so would
violate copyright in the slightest way.
I’ve thought over this issue for nearly a month. Unlike some others, I see mainly advantages. One million public domain books from Google Books are now available on the
Sony eBook Store. Amazon is offering for
sale around 400,000 books in more than 200
languages from the University of Michigan’s
digital archives. I believe that these concrete
accomplishments outweigh any theoretical
objections.
Three cheers for the Google Books Proj
ect!
Op Ed
from page 42
world and competent to belong in it. Without
any remaining wilderness we are committed
wholly, without chance for even momentary
reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our
technological termite-life, the Brave New World
of a completely man-controlled environment. We
need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is
still left, and as many kinds — because it was the
challenge against which our character as a people
was formed. The reminder and the reassurance
that it is still there is g (...truncated)