Google and the Lazarus Myth for Books
February 8, 2010
I read “Google: We Will Bring Books Back to Life” by Google’s legal eagle, David Drummond. The title of the article suggested to me that books are dead. I tried to visualize an information Lazarus, but I just received a royalty check from one of my half dozen publishers. The numbers looked fine, so that book of mine was not dead. On life support maybe. Definitely not dead.
Google saith, “Get up and read.” Van Gogh sees “yellow” as in journalism. Source: http://cruciality.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/van-gogh-the-raising-of-lazarus-1890.jpg
The argument in the Googler’s write up was well honed. I can see in my mind’s eye several Googlers laboring away in their cubes over the rough draft. This passage struck me as interesting:
First, this passage: “Yet doubts remain, and there is particular concern among authors that they are in danger of handing control of their work to Google.”
Doubts is a bit of an understatement. The love Google enjoyed when it was a wee tot of two or three is long gone. The Google is does more than engender doubt.
Second, this passage: “Some have questioned the impact of the agreement on competition, suggesting it will limit consumer choice and hand Google a monopoly. In reality, nothing in this agreement precludes any other organization from pursuing its own digitization efforts.”
Okay, let’s be clear. National libraries should be digitizing their holdings. National libraries did not take this duty, leaving it to others. Now the “others” are a set of one, the Google. No one other than Google is going to scan books, Period. I accepted this years ago when I worked briefly at UMI in 1986. I thought scanning books was a great idea. The idea got reduced to scanning specific sets of books and then providing a set of microfilm for related information. When I looked into sets, it became clear that one could scan a single book like Pollard & Redgrave and then provide microfilm of the referenced content objects. But UMI’s financial set up precluded much more than a very small, undernourished effort. If money was not available in the mid 1980s, I don’t think money will be available in the post crash, pre depression 2010s.
Third, this passage: “Imagine if that information could be made available to everyone, everywhere, at the click of a mouse. Imagine if long-forgotten books could be enjoyed again and could earn new revenues for their authors. Without a settlement it can’t happen.”
I can imagine it. I can also imagine the data available to Google’s internal knowledgebases, its advertising revenue, and its potential to generate new content objects from the information in these processed documents.
Apple is working at books from its iTunes angle. Amazon is working at books from the digital Wal*Mart angle.
Where are the national libraries? Where are the consortia of government entities responsible for archives? Where are the UN members’ pooling resources to tackle must have collections such as health and medicine? Where are the publishers’ associations?
Answer nowhere, silent, or hoping for the hobbling of Google.
Google is doing the government’s job. If the Google is stopped, the information in books is going to be handled like so many important tasks in today’s world. Poorly or not at all.
I am on the side of Googzilla. But the Google does not know I exist and does not care about an addled goose in Kentucky. I do hear, “Get up and read” in my mind.
Stephen E Arnold, February 8, 2010
No one paid me to write this. I will report this sad state of affairs to the manager of the US government document repository near my goose pond.
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