Re: Library Journal editorial about the Google Book Search settlement

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

Not to be churlish, but what did people expect? Google, after 
all, is a business, not--despite its early cloaking of itself in 
the mantle of moral goodness--an eleemosynary institution. 
Libraries have the option of undertaking all the digitizing of 
books themselves, with the concomitant costs and legal risks, but 
everyone realizes that this would be a monumental task taking 
many, many years, probably decades. Google is offering a quick 
solution on a scale not even a consortium of libraries can 
undertake in today's constrained economic climate, so it has 
every right to determine on what terms it will make its digitized 
products available.  Buyers can take it or leave it, but my guess 
is that, with other options nonexistent currently, most will grin 
and bear it and sign on the dotted line.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


>Library Journal has an editorial about the recent Google Book
>Search settlement with publishers and authors.
>
>Fialkoff, Francine. Editorial: Google Deal or Rip-Off? Library
>Journal. December 15, 2008.
>http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6618842.html
>
>The editorial concludes: "... librarians must do better than to
>acquiesce in an arrangement that relinquishes ownership of books
>online in favor of contractual provisions and for-pay schemes
>that subvert the ideals of the public library and academic
>inquiry."
>
>Bernie Sloan
>Sora Associates
>Bloomington, IN