Editorial: The Electronic Library
December 21, 2004
Last week, Google announced an ambitious new plan to start
converting millions of books into digital files in
partnership with several major libraries, including the New
York Public Library and the libraries at Harvard, Stanford
and Oxford. This is a logical step for Google, which says
its mission "is to organize the world's information and
make it universally accessible and useful." The idea of
making books available online is not new, but this plan
represents an enormous shift in scale, so enormous that if
it is carried out successfully, it may redefine the nature
of the Internet and the university.
The library is the heart of every university, and one of
the basic tasks a university performs is to preserve books
and control access to them. No matter how liberally a
university chooses to define "access," its books are
restricted by geography at the very least. Google wants to
make the books it scans freely available in searchable,
full-text forms to anyone, anywhere, with an Internet
connection. It will also provide information for finding
the nearest copy of the real physical book.
The prospect is inherently enticing, especially to anyone
who has ever worked in a major research library. Google
says it will take six years to scan some 15 million books.
It will take even longer to understand the cultural
implications of admitting everyone with Internet access to
the contents of the world's great research libraries.
But there are some serious concerns. One is about
copyright. At the outset, this project will be limited to
books that are old enough to no longer be under copyright.
This is as it should be. It will serve as a demonstration
of the immensity - and the immense cultural value - of
works in the public domain, and could well kindle a new
appreciation of the significance of the public domain.
Beginning with older books will also give Google, the
libraries and book publishers time to sort out the problem
of creating a comprehensive digital library of books that
are currently under copyright. As always in negotiations
over intellectual property, the trick will be to balance
public utility, corporate profits and the welfare of
writers, scholars and editors, and to do so, if possible,
without the intervention of Congress.
Another crucial concern is the well-being of the books
themselves. Google has developed a scanning technology that
the company claims is not destructive. Clearly, Google will
need to work closely with libraries to ensure that no books
are damaged. It is an illusion to think that the digital
versions of scanned books can replace the books themselves.
A participating library will get a free digital copy of
every book scanned in its collection. In other words, each
library will essentially get a digital backup of a
significant portion of its holdings, but it will be
critical to remember that printed books are a stable
medium, one that has persisted for hundreds of years.
Digital technology is only a few years old, and even in
that brief time, the digital world has produced dozens of
incompatible, and often unreadable, media formats. The
Google project will enhance the usefulness of the books it
encompasses, but it in no way will render them obsolete.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/opinion/21tue2.html?ex=1104637378&ei=1&en=6f29798447f26d02
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