RE: "Giveaways" and "corners" (RE: Libraries criticized for role in

["Tony McSean" <tmcsean@hollar.co.uk>]

Google Book Search)
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Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:02:09 EST
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I was told by the librarian of one of the Google scanning participants that the 
exclusivity agreement is time-bound and expires in 25 years.  From those of us 
lying in the gutter of personal mortality this seems a long time, but from the 
perspective of a library that has been serving scholars longer than the 
printing press it seemed like the blink of an eye because (a) the source 
material at the library is no less available than before scanning, and (b) left 
to their own resources the library would have taken more than 25 years to do 
the job.

Tony McSean
+44 20 7502 1067
+44  7946 291780

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Rick Anderson
Sent: 16 January 2009 00:43
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: "Giveaways" and "corners" (RE: Libraries criticized for role in
Google Book Search)

Allow me to focus on two very narrow slices of his argument:

>  Now they are just giving away access to one company that is
>  cornering the market on on-line access.

This line of argument always kind of fascinates me.  On the one
hand, we all normally love the idea of information as a public
good that doesn't diminish in value no matter how widely it's
distributed.  On the other hand, when a library "gives away"
digitized copies of its books to Google, all of a sudden we want
to talk about information as if it were a zero-sum commodity.

I think a good question to ask about participant libraries is
this: what did they have before they participated in the GBS
project that they do not have now?  (In other words, what did
they actually "give away", as opposed to "give access to"?)  The
answer, of course, is nothing.  They still have everything they
had beforehand, and much more -- assuming one agrees that
library-owned digital copies of all the scanned books from the
library's collection constitute "much more."  Even if the general
public didn't benefit at all from this "giveaway," the libraries
and their patrons benefited tremendously.  What really seems to
bother people is that Google has benefited as well without having
paid any cash to the libraries from which it "took away" digital
copies -- despite the fact that Google invested most or all of
the time, money, and capital equipment that went into the
project.

I also think this use of the phrase "cornering the market" is
sloppy. Google isn't cornering any market -- any company that has
a lot of money is free to undertake a project exactly like this
one and offer a different search interface.  Are we really saying
that Google shouldn't be permitted to have so much money?  If so,
that's fine, but let's not hide that argument behind a false and
invalid one.

---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dir. for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library
University of Utah
rick.anderson@utah.edu