Libraries Resist Google. Is the Tide Turning? October 22, 2007

“Scanning the great libraries is a wonderful idea, but if only one corporation controls access to this digital collection, we’ll have handed too much control to a private entity,” Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and the Open Content Alliance said. Amen. “There are two opposed pathways being mapped out…One is shaped by commercial concerns, the other by a commitment to openness, and which one will win is not clear.” Paul Duguid, an adjunct…

The Google Quandary: Book Search or Text Search? August 29, 2007

Apart from the text does Google Book Search really have anything to do with the life of a book? I am not so sure. As Paul Duguid points out in his illuminating piece Inheritence and loss? A brief survey of Google Books: “Even with some of the best search and scanning technology in the world behind you, it is unwise to ignore the bookish character of books.” Using Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy as his book…

Rare Books, The Bookshop and Open Access July 16, 2007

Joseph Campana’s piece, Rare Books, appeared on the Kenyon Review blog last week. The jumping off point for Campana was the New York Times article on the closing of the Heritage Book Shop, one of the premier antiquarian book shops in the world. Campana recounts his first memories of encountering a rare book at his college library and how he is as “willing to make a fetish of rare books as the next person.” Yet…

Google Book Search: A Report From the "Google Five" June 29, 2007

The first five libraries that jumped on the Google digital book train took time at the recent ALA Annual Conference to weigh in on how things are going. The Google Five are the libraries of Harvard, Oxford, Michigan and Stanford and the New York Public Library. Though all five said that they were “pleased with the progress” they also acknowledged that there have been some issues, which range from books being damaged to questions about…

Censorship at Home and Abroad June 26, 2007

This was one of last weeks Daily Number at the Pew Research Center for the People & The Press . The headline: 46% support public school library book banning. The good news is that this is the “lowest level of support in 20 years.” What are these “dangerous ideas” that people want to keep from their kids? Isn’t the act of keeping our kids from these ideas just as dangerous? Then we have Google going…