At Columbia Conference, Harvard’s Darnton Asks: Is Google the Elsevier of the Future?

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 3/18/2009

• Public not at the table
• Fear of monopoly pricing
• New mechanisms needed

(This article first appeared in the March 17 issue of the LJ Academic Newswire.)

Is the public’s interest in books at risk with the pending Google Book Search Settlement? That was one of many issues addressed at an all-day conference on the settlement, held on March 13 at Columbia University.
 
In the final panel of the day, which addressed public interest issues, Google’s Alexander Macgillivray, associate general counsel for products and intellectual property, responded a bit pugnaciously. He noted that the panel included a representative of major publishers and “a bunch of very nice folks from extremely privileged universities.”
 
There are perhaps a hundred million people, he suggested, not just at universities, who might benefit from the database. “The biggest thing the settlement does is provide the ability for any researcher in the United States, anyone with access to Internet and access to a public library,” to access the database, he said.

A selfless venture? 
Macgillivray proposed that University of Michigan Paul Courant, who was in the audience, had done “kind of a selfless thing in getting rid of [his university's] competitive advantage,” given that a small college can now have access to a large collection.

He suggested that “a special type of researcher,” such as automated translation experts, would also benefit enormously from the database, that “the long term effects of those researchers having access to this corpus” could even lead “to more peace in the world,” and that the database would add significantly to access to books by disabled people, citing an endorsement from the National Federation of the Blind.

Would Google give up any of its competitive advantage? Critics like Brewster Kahle and Rick Johnson have noted that the company restricts scanned books to Google search only and enforces restrictions on some uses of public domain books, even those scanned from public institutions, like the University of Michigan.

Monopoly and price abuse?
“It is a fabulous thing that we can have at our fingertips the greatest digital library,” allowed Harvard University librarian Robert Darnton, perhaps the most prominent critic among librarians of the settlement. However, he said, “Readers haven’t been mentioned… we’ve heard a great deal about money and legalism.”

“The downside has to do with the danger of monopoly,” he said, adding that, while not all monopolies are bad, the danger comes in the abuse of power, notably via monopoly pricing. “So we have a situation where Google can really ratchet up prices, and that’s what really worries me,” he said. “There’s no real authority to enforce fair pricing… I’m worried that Google will be the Elsevier of the future, but magnified by a hundred times.” Without a mechanism to police pricing, he warned, “it’s going to ruin libraries.”

Macgillivray responded later by reading the pricing objectives in the settlement: the realization of revenue at market rates and the realization of broad access to books by the public. He suggested that “there’s an enforceable provision that limits pricing.”

Modifications needed
Still, Darnton didn't buy it. He suggested that provisions for monitoring prices be explored, noting that adjusting prices to FTE “could clobber Ohio State and the University of Minnesota,” two institutions with large student bodies. While Google talks about prices being relative to comparable products, he noted, there simply are no comparable products. 

“I think we need a public authority to monitor prices,” Darnton said. “Certainly, we need representation on the registry, of libraries and readers.” He called the provision of one terminal in public libraries “one of the weakest provisions,” and predicted chaos in a large urban public library. Google, meanwhile, has said it would consider more than one terminal in larger libraries.

Another solution?
Is Congressional intervention on the public’s behalf a possibility? Does the settlement, for example, make it harder, or perhaps easier to go to Congress for authorization to create a national digital library? 

“I hate to say this, I don’t think it’s possible,” Darnton said. “We’ve got this settlement, and if it’s not modified now, it’s going to shape the world of digital information for the near future, maybe the far future.” 

Observers, via technology
The conference, meanwhile, was diligently Tweeted and blogged, with contributions from the personal blogs of University of Michigan librarian Paul Courant, Cornell University Library intellectual property officer Peter Hirtle, and Peter Brantley, executive director of the Digital Library Federation. 

Read more Newswire stories:

Library Journal Releases 2009 Movers & Shakers List

Lean and Green: Technology, Environment Front and Center at 14th ACRL National Conference

The ACRL Virtual Conference: Experiencing the Webcasts

NYU’s Mandel: Google Book Search Incremental, Transformative, Worrisome

Another Harvard School Embraces OA Mandate

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