{"id":10,"date":"2007-08-20T18:31:25","date_gmt":"2007-08-21T01:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freerangelibrarian.com\/nasig\/2007\/08\/20\/v-a-few-googly-questions\/"},"modified":"2007-08-21T15:46:54","modified_gmt":"2007-08-21T22:46:54","slug":"v-a-few-googly-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freerangelibrarian.com\/nasig\/2007\/08\/20\/v-a-few-googly-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"A few googly questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Random question #1:<\/strong> Why are we helping Google build a proprietary book depository created from public goods? <\/p>\n

Google is a company with over 10,000 employees. Its corporate motto is “Don’t be evil” — which is dangerously far from “Do be good.” Visiting the Googleplex requires signing an nondisclosure agreement. <\/p>\n

None of this is wrong or bad — for a company. But Siva Vaidhyanathan has asked the astute questions<\/a> we have been hesitant to pose to the ARL directors leaping into bed with Google one after the other: <\/p>\n

Is it really proper for one company — no matter how egalitarian it claims to be — to organize all the world’s information? Who asked it to? Isn’t that the job of universities, academics, and librarians? Have those institutions and people failed in their mission? Must they outsource everything?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not only is it proper, but is it strategic? Google will not disclose its scanning methods, the nature of its contracts, or how many books it has scanned so far. As Library Journal noted<\/a>, the Google contracts with University of California and University of Michigan state that the university “can redistribute no more than ten percent of scanned material to other libraries or schools, even for educational purposes.” So when some professor requests the book that pushes the contract into 10.00001 percent, we turn him down — because we had a commercial company digitize our books? <\/p>\n

Take another look at the Google book contracts and note what isn’t there: public access, open formats, putting a library search box on the book search page, or quality standards — which as Mr. Simpson might put it, range from questionable to craptacular<\/a>. <\/p>\n

And we agreed to this. We’re flocking to it. We’re acting glad and grateful. Did I miss something? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Random question #1: Why are we helping Google build a proprietary book depository created from public goods? Google is a company with over 10,000 employees. Its corporate motto is “Don’t be evil” — which is dangerously far from “Do be good.” Visiting the Googleplex requires signing an nondisclosure agreement. None of this is wrong or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freerangelibrarian.com\/nasig\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freerangelibrarian.com\/nasig\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freerangelibrarian.com\/nasig\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freerangelibrarian.com\/nasig\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freerangelibrarian.com\/nasig\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freerangelibrarian.com\/nasig\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freerangelibrarian.com\/nasig\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freerangelibrarian.com\/nasig\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freerangelibrarian.com\/nasig\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}