Zowie! The front page of the NYT — above the fold, no less — has a gorgeously long article about research libraries rejecting scanning deals with Google and Microsoft and choosing instead to go with the underdog, crunchy-goodnik Open Content Alliance. Among other things, it feels gratifying (if a little alternate-universe) to see the national […]
As we enter the final stage of labor for the new search engine, I have to re-test with the same search terms we’ve been using since we started this evaluation. I feel faint nausea every time I flip open the list of queries. Sure enough, a couple things didn’t work right after the latest tweak, […]
This post from Good Morning Silicon Valley is eloquent in its brevity. I have so much to say about this, but can’t do it this weekend. I hope someone else does. My first thought: is it right for Google to help China perpetuate the Big Lie? Bookmark to:
My favorite scene in Fried Green Tomatoes is the over-the-top moment in the diner where the detective dines unawares on the barbecued remains of the bad husband killed in self-defense. “Secret’s in the sauce,” Sipsey keeps saying. Google yielded up a little search engine ‘cue today with its debut newsletter for librarians. Not surprisingly, Google […]
I used Google Book Search this morning for an essay I’m writing about Palm Springs where I talk briefly about the Salton Sea (Marc Reisner’s smart, humorous description of the origins of this weird body of water is one reason Cadillac Desert is on my Favorite Books list). This brief PowerPoint is a brief walk-through […]
On Monday, December 5, 7 p.m. ET, Open Source Radio will feature a show about Google Book Search and the Google Library Project. I (wearing my gadfly librarian blogger hat) am a likely (but not slam-dunk) participant on that program. If I speak, it will not be on the legal issues but on the implications […]
Via if:book, which added its own nicely textured analysis, comes Siva on Google, absolutely nailing the issue: “Libraries should not be relinquishing their core duties to private corporations for the sake of expediency.” Now, I realize I said that because Siva is echoing my own concerns. But he does it so exquisitely, and with such […]
I am granting a source anonymity, but I saw it with Mine Own Eyes: Naked News covered Google Print on its TV news wrap-up. (No, I do not subscribe to Naked News!) I tried to catch a little of the audio to podcast it here, but I’m having a bad software day. Suffice it to […]
The eponymous blog On Language has an amusing discussion, complete with translations, of a rather nervous Le Monde editorial about Google Print by Jean-Noël Jeanneney, head of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF). Jeanneney is worried to the point of near-hysteria about “the risk of a crushing domination by America in defining the idea that […]