[PADG:290] RE: Fwd: NYTimes.com Article: Editorial: The Elect roni c Library

["Rekrut, Ala (CHT)" <ARekrut@xxxxxxxxx>]

I believe the editorial is inspired by this article which ran in the NYT
earlier in the week:
------------------------
Questions and Praise for Google Web Library

December 18, 2004
 By FELICIA R. LEE

When Randall C. Jimerson, the president of the Society of
American Archivists, heard of Google's plan to convert
certain holdings at Oxford University and at some of the
leading research libraries in the United States into
digital files, freely searchable over the Web, he asked,
"What are they thinking?"

Mr. Jimerson had worries. Who would select the material?
How would it be organized and identified to avoid mountains
of decontextualized excerpts? Would Google users eventually
forgo the experience of holding a book, actually seeing a
historical document, the serendipity of slow research?

But in recent interviews, many scholars and librarians
applauded the announcement by Google, the operator of the
world's most popular Internet search service, to digitize
some of the collections at Oxford, the University of
Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library.

The plan, in the words of Paul Duguid, information
specialist at the University of California at Berkeley,
will "blast wide" open the walls around the libraries of
world-class institutions.

David Nasaw, an historian and director of the Center for
the Humanities at the City University of New York's
Graduate Center, said the ability to use keywords to locate
books and documents could save academics travel time and
money and ease and broaden the scope of their research.

But Google's plan - which many saw as the first step toward
creating a global virtual library - has huge implications
for information gathering and use, also raising concerns
among those interviewed.

No one forecast a brave new world without actual libraries.
Rather, they raised questions.

How will research be improved for students already
struggling with, among other things, how to authenticate
Internet information? What new roles will librarians play
in helping people parse a vast amount of more easily
obtainable information? Will libraries have to cooperate to
prevent redundancy in their collections?

Each agreement with a library is slightly different. Google
plans to digitize nearly all the eight million books in
Stanford's collection and the seven million at Michigan.
The Harvard project will initially be limited to only about
40,000 volumes. The scanning at Bodleian Library at Oxford
will be limited to an unspecified number of books published
before 1900, while the New York Public Library project will
involve fragile material not under copyright that library
officials said would be of interest primarily to scholars.

"This all captures people's imagination in a wonderful
way," said Kate Wittenberg, director of the Electronic
Publishing Initiative at Columbia University. "But whether
it's right or wrong is not the whole question and not the
whole answer."

This year Ms. Wittenberg's group completed a three-year
study of research habits that included 1,233 students
across the country. The study concluded that electronic
resources had become the main tool for gathering
information, particularly among undergraduates.

But, "What I've learned is that libraries help people
formulate questions as well as find answers," Ms.
Wittenberg said. "Who will do that in a virtual world?"

On the other hand, she said, an enhanced databank could
make it easier for students to research topics across
disciplines, changing the questions that professors ask and
providing more robust answers. For example, a topic like
"climate change" touches on both political science and
science, she said, and "in the physical world, the books
about them are in two different buildings at Columbia."

And because many students have trouble recognizing reliable
Web sources, it cannot hurt that reputable libraries have
only published, peer-reviewed materials, Ms. Wittenberg
said. But looking ahead, she wondered about the vast
amounts of materials and original documents housed outside
libraries, in museums and archives.

Mr. Jimerson said, "A scanned image will only tell you some
things, and the sheer volume of records makes scanning
everything difficult." But he added that he supported
Google's plan in theory. "I recall the story of a gentleman
being in a library and watching a researcher sniff books,"
he said. "It turned out that the aroma of vinegar was still
embedded in those that had been treated with vinegar to
prevent cholera during an epidemic."

Likewise, Robert Darnton, a professor of history at
Princeton who is writing a book about the history of books,
noted that by looking at a book's binding and paper
quality, a researcher can discern much about the period in
which it was published, the publisher and the intended
audience.

"There may be some false consciousnesses about this
breakthrough, that all learning will be at our fingertips,"
Mr. Darnton said of the plans to enhance Google's database.
He saw room for both Google and real-world research.

Some interviewed were concerned that Google could not fully
reproduce material that was still under copyright
protection, which means all books published in the United
States after 1923. And in this day and age, Mr. Nasaw said,
far too many students already read excerpts and seldom read
the full texts.

It is not an either-or situation. Libraries have already
been changed by the Internet, said Paul LeClerc, president
and chief executive of the New York Public Library.
Libraries will still be needed to collect, classify and
store information, he said.

"TV did not replace radio," Mr. LeClerc said, "Videos and
and DVD's did not replace people going to the movies. It's
still easier to read a book by hand than online."

"The New York Public Library Web site gets three-fourths of
a billion hits a year from 200 different countries and
territories, and that's with no marketing or advertising,"
he said. "That's the context in which this new element has
to be placed."

"We had 13 million reader visits last year," he continued.
"We're serving a multiplicity of audiences - we serve
people physically and virtually. It's an enormous
contribution to human intellectual development."

Carol Brey-Casiano, president of the American Library
Association, forecast a time when local libraries would
more closely reflect the needs of their regions and
population rather than all offering the same books. It
means that libraries will become more collaborative, she
said.

Already, libraries buy fewer reference materials because
such materials are online, she said. At the same time, the
number of library visitors doubled in the last 10 years to
1.2 billion visits a year now, she added, with many
visitors seeking help in managing vast amounts of
information. As she put it: "People are saying, 'I went on
Google and I got 40,000 hits. Now what?' "

Many university leaders realize that for most people,
information does not exist unless it is online, said Paul
Courant, provost and executive vice president for academic
affairs at the University of Michigan.

He said many universities wanted to digitize their holdings
and wondered about collaborating on buying books to avoid
redundancy in an increasingly digital world. Google's plan
answered their needs, he said.

Mr. Courant acknowledged that some people in Michigan's
library system were worried about losing the
distinctiveness of the university's collection, as part of
a vast database. But he theorized that Google would work as
a form of advertisement to lead more people to the
libraries' doors.

"The librarians will also continue to be responsible for
archiving and curating our own material and collecting it,"
he said. "Many scholars will go online and say, 'I have to
go see the book' and come here."Mr. Courant envisioned that
in 20 years huge archives would be shared by institutions.
While the world needs "tens of thousands of copies of 'To
the Lighthouse,' " he said, "we don't need to have a
zillion copies of some arcane monograph written by a
sociologist in 1951."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/18/books/18libr.html?ex=1104370576&ei=1&en=db
a584244450bc78

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

-----Original Message-----
From: Cybulski, Walter (NIH/NLM) [mailto:Cybulskw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2004 6:15 AM
To: 'padg@xxxxxxx'
Subject: [PADG:287] RE: Fwd: NYTimes.com Article: Editorial: The Electroni c
Library 

The following shockingly inspiring statements from the NYT piece speak
volumes:

"It will also provide information for finding the nearest copy of the real
physical book."

"It is an illusion to think that the digital versions of scanned books can
replace the books themselves."

"...it will be critical to remember that printed books are a stable medium,
one that has persisted for hundreds of years."

"The Google project will enhance the usefulness of the books it encompasses,
but it in no way will render them obsolete."

"...a demonstration of the immensity - and the immense cultural value - of
works in the public domain..."

Someone should microfilm this article.  Either a librarian wrote it or a
librarian slipped something into the gingerbread latte of the person who
did.

Best wishes & holiday good cheer.

Walter Cybulski