Are libraries thinking about the commercialization of GoogleLibrary?

"Which encyclopedia should I buy for my children?" I'll bet most librarians (and all public librarians) have fielded that question. If they were trained the way I was, the answer is to lead the patrons to encyclopedia buying guides which evaluate a number of features, to help users decide for themselves. We were taught to resist the temptation to just say "World Book."

But do libraries know what they may be heading for when turning over massive collections for digitization by a commercial player? I am still enthusiastic about the prospect of making information as accessible as possible to everyone, but we must ask the right questions in the early stages.

Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center,  pointed out this important concern to me: do libraries that are turning over their holdings to Google realize how sophisticated (and anti-competitive) online advertising has become? In a Feb. 18 CNet article, Stefanie Olsen writes that the newest version of Google's browser toolbar (now in beta) has a feature that automatically triggers links on web pages that have certain text -- street addresses "suddenly sprout links to Google's map service by default."

As another example, book publishers' ISBN numbers trigger links to Amazon.com. Google actually modifies the HTML of a third party's web page.

For example, I might recommend you buy The Library's Legal Answer Book             ISBN 0-8389-0828-4 from the American Library Association online store or from Powells.com (actually, please do). But if I understand correctly, if I type it like that, not linking 0-8389-0828-4 anywhere, the ISBN number would be linked for me to Amazon, at least for Google toolbar users.

Olsen reports that Marissa Mayer, Google's director of Web products, says that it is a user-elected feature, and in its full release in April, ISBN numbers might trigger links to other sites (booksellers, I suppose) for user selection. How the other sites may be chosen is not described.

Google Print is already up and running, of course, and you can search it today, and see which booksellers are linked to the titles.  Instructions on how to search Google Print are not well publicized, but you can try it here ...

Google Print already gives users links to booksellers ... Amazon of course, and some others - I see Barnes&Noble, Booksense and of course Froogle (a google search tool for online sellers).

Instructions:

Go to google.com ... then type in the word "book" as your first search term.  Next type in keywords from the book you're looking for.  For example, if you type:

       book   library

you'll get these search results .  I clicked on Books, Bricks and Bytes, (which will likely be one of your choices if you do this soon) and got page 45 of the book with a list of booksellers on the left hand side of the page.

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Note on terminology:  I'm the only one I know using the term "GoogleLibrary" ... it is a part of Google Print, but I choose to write GoogleLibrary to refer to the massive library project, as opposed to the earlier established Google Print that worked directly with publishers.

p.s. If you read this far, maybe you're involved in part of this project.  If it's possible to share the contract agreement between Google and your library, that might answer a lot of questions.

Comments

[Eli]

I'm not sure if you already know this, but this very issue is going to be the subject of a panel session at Annual. (I'm not participating, I just heard about it ...)