Re: Google Print Home Page now offers searching

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Every book publisher I am aware of has plans (carefully thought-out plans)
to make books available online.

Joe Esposito

On 6/9/05, Ross Atkinson <ra13@cornell.edu> wrote:
> Monographic publishers (unlike many journal publishers) seem to have no
> practicable or systematic plans to make their publications electronically
> accessible. There are e-book vendors,of course, but their hands are
> seriously tied by the publishers--who insist upon very high prices and
> sometimes very poor access. The more that scholarly work is written and
> read online, the more problematic this (admittedly understandable)
> intransigence will become, especially in the humanities.
> 
> Jim is concerned that texts he needs have been scanned, and yet he is
> being denied adequate access to them.  The more Google Print grows, the
> more scholars are going to have the same experiences Jim has described. If
> it is available, why can't they have it to use? I expect some real anger
> on the part of students and scholars will develop.  They will say, as Jim
> has, that this seems either daft or goofy.  But who is daft or goofy?
> Google, if they're smart (and they are), will say something implying that
> they are not the daft and goofy ones--but rather it is the publishers who
> are insisting upon such access restrictions.
> 
> This will place much more pressure upon monographic publishers finally to
> find some solution to making their publications more accessible in an
> online environment.  It will and should become clear to them that, if they
> do not find such solutions, scholarly authors will be obliged to find some
> other means to publish their work, so that it will be easily and more
> openly accessible online.  -- I don't know if Google has a plan--but if
> they do, and it is in fact to encourage scholarly monographic publishers
> to make some long overdue changes in their access policies, then it seems
> to me to be an excellent one; and Jim, and of course others, by getting
> testy about the limitations of Google Print, are essential players in it.
> 
> ---Ross
> 
> Ross Atkinson
> Associate University Librarian
>   for Collections
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, NY 14853-5301