Ebook Summit Webcast Tackles Google Books Project
Two librarians, a Google rep, and a PW editor walk into an ebook summit...and share their varying takes on the pending Google Books settlement. By Raya Kuzyk Sep 27, 2010|
|
Of particular interest to the academic librarians participating in LJ's and School Library Journal's September 29 virtual ebook summit was the "Google Books Project" webcast, in which Ivy Anderson, director of collection development and management, California Digital Library (CDL), and Karen Coyle, a digital library technology consultant, shared their differing thoughts on the consequences of the mass digitization endeavor.
(For background on their dialog to date, see "On Eve of Google Book Search Settlement Hearing, Some Library Voices," LJ Academic Newswire, 2/17/10.)
Of the ebook summit’s more than 2000 registrants, some 300 tuned in to the hour-long webcast, titled “The Google Books Project: Watershed Benefit or Dangerous Precedent?” and moderated by LJ news editor Norman Oder. The panel also featured Google Books project manager Brandon Badger and Publishers Weekly features editor Andrew Albanese.
Badger touts the benefits
"The goal of Google Books is really just to augment the answers we're able to provide on Google.com," said Badger, who argued that Google's mass digitization efforts would enable greater access to a wider array of potentially enhanced content through multiple platforms.
Similar was his explanation for the reasoning behind Google's plans to begin selling access to books. The move, he said, "would allow us to provide an easy mechanism where you can pay, the publisher gets more pay, and we can provide you with more information."
Badger stated that participating libraries would be able to retain their copies of Google in-copyright scans in accordance with copyright law, i.e., for replacement purposes, for the creation of additional services, and for long-term preservation of the intellectual record.
Albanese elucidates the difficulties
In contextualizing both sides of the debate, PW's Albanese likened the Google Books settlement to the healthcare debate in America in that "the core problem was never properly framed for the public." He faulted Google for "unawareness of its public perception" as well as publishers and authors groups for "failing to grasp how deeply their overreaching copyright rhetoric had sunk in."
Necessary to both sides, he said, was a more informed, self-aware, and open discussion of current copyright law in moving ahead. (Albanese said it was presently unclear where things stood with the settlement: "Judge Denny Chin is working on his own timeframe, and nobody knows what that timeframe is.")
Anderson's take: watershed benefit
CDL's Anderson, who oversees the University of Califonia's book digitization partnership with Google, said that beyond improving discovery and access, mass digitization would enable new modes of scholarship, preserve and protect library collections, help libraries to manage their collections more effectively, and fulfill libraries' public service mission.
Prohibitive costs and time commitments prevent libraries from digitizing their collections themselves on a comparative scale, she said, also adding that criticism of the Google Books settlement had significantly helped to improve it, e.g., via provisions promising better treatment of orphan works and enabling rightsholders to make their books available without restriction or cost.
To underscore her point that "libraries, not Google, are in charge of their own future," Anderson used as an example Hathi Trust, a library-led digital repository initiative independent of Google Books that has to date digitized 6.6 million volumes, 1.3 million of them in the public domain.
While acknowledging that "most Hathi Trust partners are in fact Google Book partners like ourselves," Anderson said that "Hathi Trust will always have a lot of content that's not in Google." She additionally confirmed that "under the settlement if approved that rights holders would have some right to remove their books."
Coyle's take: dangerous precedent
Library technology consultant Coyle warned that libraries should "fear the unknown" and spoke to various points of uncertainty and doubt, expressing particular concern over the secrecy and murky legal issues surrounding the settlement, the differences in values and intentions between libraries and Google, and the future of Google vs. the future role of libraries.
"It's a tug between trust and power, and who has the trust, and who has the power." Given all of the recent issues relating to privacy and intellectual freedom, she said, "how far can we trust Google to not be evil?" What's more, is Google ready to play the role of a library vendor? And were it to outsource its library services, what effect would that have?
While Anderson said her experiences with Google have been positive, she called Coyle's concerns "valid" and advised that "libraries just have to be very focused on our goals and our mission...in the context of this evolving world."
For her part, Coyle encouraged participants to look to other digital repository sources, like the Internet Archive's Open Library initiative, "so that it's not a monopoly, so it's not just Google doing this."
This webcast will be available for on-demand viewing from Oct. 1–Dec. 31, 2010.
Top Three Panel-related Tweets
- @TheLiB Up to 15% of what Google scans can be excluded from the Google Books library collection at their discretion. #ebooksummit
- sbolech Since Google is basically an ad company, maybe we can have ad supported access to Google Books... #ebooksummit
- @emilyw00 #ebooksummit 2 years since #GBS settlement came out, still don't know what's going to happen. eons in net time. #whereisGodot
