Open Access News

I have to confess, I am thrilled and dazzled by the potential of such a machine [Google Library] and the research and distribution opportunities it presents. I sincerely wish every Internet user had access to a full-text search of every book in the Google libraries. But, as we all know, we should be careful what we wish for. This particular project, I fear, opens up more problems than it solves. It will certainly fail to live up to its utopian promise. And it dangerously elevates Google's role and responsibility as the steward — with no accountability — of our information ecosystem. That's why I, an avowed open-source, open-access advocate, have serious reservations about it. It pains me to declare this: Google's Library Project is a risky deal for libraries, researchers, academics, and the public in general. However, it's actually not a bad deal for publishers and authors, despite their protestations....I can't help but envision this fight [between Google and the suing authors and publishsers] as one between Godzilla and Megalon. Whoever the bad guy turns out to be, a whole lot of good things are going to get crushed in the melee....To preserve its status as the elite, venerated, and fast-moving technology company that does good as well as well, Google must therefore do two things. It must continue to convince the world that it is the anti-Microsoft. And it must find more things to index and expose to the world....Google's corporate mission statement includes the rather optimistic and humanistic phrase, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."...Google co-founder Sergey Brin once offered a more ominous indication of what the enterprise might become: "The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God." Both quotations should worry us. Is it really proper for one company — no matter how egalitarian it claims to be — to organize all the world's information? Who asked it to? Isn't that the job of universities, libraries, academics, and librarians? Have those institutions and people failed in their mission? Must they outsource everything? Is anyone even watching to see if Google does the job properly?...With Google Library, we have a whole new set of privacy concerns. Can we trust Google not to turn over individual reading records of patrons to the FBI or local law-enforcement officials? There is nothing in Google's privacy policy that promises it will resist such abusive practices. In fact, its policy declares that it will give law-enforcement investigators information to "satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request." Even a stronger privacy pledge from the company would be hard to take seriously. Plenty of other companies, like airlines, have violated their own privacy policies....I know many librarians who would rather go to jail than reveal my borrowing habits to suspicious snoops. I doubt I can count on Google's employees to be as committed to user confidentiality. It's important to remember that Google serves its own masters: its stockholders and its partners. It does not serve the people of the state of Michigan or the students and faculty members of Harvard University. So the five libraries in Google's project are essentially outsourcing the risk and responsibility for digitizing texts and making them searchable online....[W]e must recognize that some of the thorniest problems facing libraries today — paying for and maintaining commercial electronic databases and cataloging services — are a direct result of rapid privatization and onerous contract terms. There are too many devils in too many details. The long-term risk of privatization is simple: Companies change and fail. Libraries and universities last. Should we entrust our heritage and collective knowledge to a business that has been around for less time than Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were together?...It also invites a collision of norms and rules unlike any we have seen in almost a century. It is certainly the most interesting — and possibly the most disruptive — copyright conflict since battles over copying film and recorded music....So this is my concern: Google has not only, in the words of a University of Pittsburgh law professor, Michael J. Madison, "bet the company" on its Print Library. It has "bet the Internet." If a New York court rules clumsily, indelicately, or too broadly in an attempt to express umbrage at Google's audacity, then the principles of Kelly [which basically make search engine indexing legal] are in danger. So are future similar initiatives, whether they come from libraries or the private sector....[U]niversity counsels are already skittish enough. They often advise against doing things that are clearly legal out of fear and misunderstanding. A bad loss in the Google case could blow a massive chilling effect across all sorts of good ideas....All the proprietary algorithms in the world are not going to replace [librarians]. There was a reason why Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and others of their generation believed the republic could not survive without libraries. They are embodiments of republican ideals. They pump the blood of a democratic culture, information. So I worry. We need services like that provided by Google Library. But they should be "Library Library" projects. Libraries should not be relinquishing their core duties to private corporations for the sake of expediency.

Update. Siva has posted the full text to his blog for those without CHE subscriptions.