RE: Libraries criticized for role in Google Book Search

["JM FAIVRE" <faivre.j-m69@wanadoo.fr>]

Dear Karl,

You wrote:

> ....from simply blocking access one day to all .edu domains and 
>starting to charge a fee

Seems hard to imagine dear Karl !

...;and a big lot of US university already cooperate with 
Google.com. It's not necessatily a bad thing! Big publishers have 
too huge economic weight concerning university and library 
budgets

Nowadays in France Google.com and our domains.edu did not really 
cooperate, yet library budgets have serious difficulties

Globally document digitalization process could be shown as the 
alternative guilty process such as CD/mp3 for music business. But 
did you imagine you could stop a new Gutenberg 's (r)evolution by 
universitary fees ?

So really imagine, please!

Best regards

Jean-Marie Faivre M.D.
Department of Nephrology library
CHU Lyon / France

****

KARL Bridges wrote:

Google is currently a free service.  This situation with Google
Books is a slippery slope that, ultimately, could end up with
Google becoming entirely a subscription service. There's nothing
to stop them from simply blocking access one day to all .edu
domains and starting to charge a fee.

Nothing wrong with that, it's just business, but we need to keep
that in mind since it has serious implications for library
budgets. Google is not in business for altruistic reasons. It
exists to maximize shareholder value -- just like any other large
corporation.

Karl Bridges
University of Vermont