UMich reaction to Google suit
University of Michigan has issued a statement from James Hilton, associate provost and interim librarian, reacting to the lawsuit brought against Google yesterday in relation to the library portion of its Google Print program.
"We continue to be enthusiastic about our partnership with Google, and we are confident that this project complies with copyright law. The overarching purpose of copyright law is to promote progress in society. In doing so, it is always a balancing act between the limited rights of the author and the rights of the public."It is important to note that we will not be sharing the full text of copyrighted works with the public. The Google library project will point searchers toward the works, and tell them how to buy or borrow a copy, but will not give them the full content of works in copyright. This increased searching capability will benefit authors and publishers. Their works will become available to a much wider audience than has ever been the case in the past, and we believe this will increase sales of their works."
Okay ... fine.well.good.
"This is a tremendously important public policy discussion. In the future, most research and learning is going to take place in a digital world. Material that does not exist in digital form will effectively disappear. We need to decide whether we are going to allow the development of new technology to be used as a tool to restrict the public's access to knowledge, or if we are going to ensure that people can find these works and that they will be preserved for future generations."
And at the third sentence of the preceding paragraph, Mr. Hilton lost me. And as much as I support digitization and online learning, I'd consider sentence #2 to be somewhat debatable (what point in "the future" does he mean? 10-20-50 years from now?). But to infer that anything that isn't digitized will be lost or abandoned to the dregs of scholarship seems over-reaching at best. I heartily approve of efforts to digitize as much as possible, and I support even more attempts to preserve and provide long-term access to born-digital materials. I believe there are many benefits to digitization: opportunities for remote access, easier (in many but not all cases) duplication, faster keyword browsing of full text, among others. But declaiming with certainty the abandonment (or death) of print has not served prognosticators well for the past few decades and I don't think scholarship will be well-served by it now, even for the laudable goals of encouraging digitization.
Comments
Errr... print hasn't died for over six thousand years. It wasn't destroyed by radio or by television. I agree with you: it's not going away soon.
Posted by: Chip Unicorn | September 21, 2005 08:22 PM
While I don't see print disappearing from existence I believe the findability of material will become more and more important. I can foresee the use of material that isn't easily searchable decreasing while those that are searchable online becoming what is predominantly used. This trend may already be present in journal use though I am unsure. This is what I got from the comment. I think the saying goes, "if the user can't find it, then it's not there". The physical item may exist (and always exist) but if it's not easily findable then it effectively disappears. To what degree is up for debate.
Posted by: Ryan Eby | September 21, 2005 10:05 PM
I would agree with Ryan's analysis above. I think it has to do with indexing and findability. The first place scholars of the next generation will go is digital, and if it isn't there the chances of it being used are sufficiently small as to be a non-issue. That's the case NOW with undergraduates...it will climb up the chain as they age.
I think it's already happening, and see Google's efforts as a way of future-proofing as much information as possible. Go Go Fair Use!
Posted by: Jason | September 26, 2005 11:52 AM