RE: Google's Card Catalog Should Be Left Open

["Mcsean, Tony (ELS)" <T.Mcsean@elsevier.com>]

Interestingly, from the paper given by Anurag Ancharya (Main Engineer,
Google Scholar) gave to last week's International Congress on Medical
Librarianship, he seems to have become aware and interested in what
"proper" indexing has to offer.

Tony McSe�n
Director of Library Relations
Elsevier

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Stuivenga, Will
Sent: 25 September 2005 19:34
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Google's Card Catalog Should Be Left Open 

I'm not sure if there is confusion, or just a difference of opinion on this
notably tendentious issue among librarians, or between librarians and search
engine folks, perhaps.

As I'm sure everyone knows, Google doesn't really USE meta-data, such as
bibliographic records. At least not in the way they were intended to be
used. Instead of searching surrogates, Google prefers to search full text.
In the Google Print database, users will be locating books by keyword
searching the full text, not by searching bibliographic records as in
traditional library catalogs.

So in any sense in which Google is analogous to a library catalog as a
finding tool, it makes perfect sense for EFF to refer to Google Print as
their "card catalog."

I am told that there are already more than twice as many WorldCat hits
coming to OCLC from Open WorldCat than from libraries searching via the more
traditional FirstSearch interface. Can anyone believe even for a minute that
the same won't be true for the books that are included in Google Print? The
simple fact is, books indexed (if that's a legitimate term to use) in Google
Print will be found by users several magnitudes of times more often than the
same or other books in traditional library catalogs. Whether users actually
get their hands on any of those books, or actually obtain useful information
this way is another issue altogether.

So you may agree or disagree on whether this will be an effective means of
locating relevant materials, but the plain fact of the matter is that Google
is where most people go first for their information, not to their local
library, even via the library's online catalog.

Librarians should be more concerned about whether or not they're getting
their stuff out onto the open web where their users are than in arguing over
the semantics of what Google is doing. In other words, making sure library
holdings and catalog data are included in the OCLC Open WorldCat project and
any other available endeavors with similar goals.

Does Google have plans to link Google Print results into OCLC's Open
WorldCat records, so that folks who are lucky enough to locate a book
they're interested in can automatically be re-directed to a library, not
just to Amazon, and not just to the 5 libraries whose books were scanned?
These are kinds of questions we should be asking.

Otherwise librarians will still be arguing about the advantages of
controlled subject vocabularies even after they have become tokens of an
obsolete institution. Not that I really believe that is in imminent danger
of happening!

Will

Will Stuivenga wstuivenga@secstate.wa.gov Project Manager, Statewide
Database Licensing (SDL) Washington State Library Division, OSOS
360.704.5217 fax: 360.586.7575
 

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Miller, Ron
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 10:27 AM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Google's Card Catalog Should Be Left Open 

There seems to be some confusion about the difference between a
bibliographic entry in a catalog and a copy of, or excerpt from, a book.

Ron Miller