"Giveaways" and "corners" (RE: Libraries criticized for role in Google Book Search)

["Rick Anderson" <rick.anderson@utah.edu>]

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