The Trouble with Google: Why Have School Libraries Been Left Out in the Cold?
By Brian Kenney, Editor-in-Chief -- School Library Journal, 4/1/2009
For the most part, Google Book Search hasn’t made it onto most school librarians’ radar screens.
The tool, which searches the full text of scanned books (Google claims that seven million books are searchable) serves up content that ranges from just a few snippets of copyrighted titles to the entire text of books that are in the public domain. The latter can be downloaded as PDFs and read on screen or printed.
Most of these books are available through agreements with publishers, but many are available through Google’s Library Project, a partnership between the Internet giant and some of the world’s most famous research libraries, including Harvard, Oxford, and the New York Public Library. Google has scanned one million books from the University of Michigan alone.
This association between Google Book Search and high-end academic content is, understandably, what causes most school librarians to ignore Book Search. “What use is some 19th-century French treatise on animal husbandry to my fifth graders?” they’ve asked me. “Do school libraries really need more out-of-date science materials?”
This lack of interest from the school library community is a problem for two reasons. One, from what we know about Google, Book Search will inevitably grow and change. Remember nearly a decade ago when Google was just a cool, clean interface that delivered results with the sort of relevancy that caught our attention? Now, of course, Google has become a collection of tools and products that dominates the information world. Book Search today might seem a little academic and esoteric, but it will certainly evolve. Will it be useful for elementary libraries? I doubt it. But I bet no high school will want to be without it.
Which brings me to the second problem. Google has been involved in litigation with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, which claim that the Library Project, in scanning library books that aren’t in the public domain, infringes on their copyrights. A settlement was reached this past October, which still needs to be approved by a judge in June. It’s a complex document (over 200 pages!) and thankfully lawyer and technology expert Jonathan Band has produced “A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement” (just, you know, Google it).
As part of the settlement, users will be able to purchase online access to the full text of copyrighted books that aren’t commercially available (if they’re still commercially available, Google will probably offer a “buy this book” option). But public libraries and not-for-profit higher education institutions can get what Google calls free “Public Access Service,” which will allow users to view the full text of copyrighted but not commercially available books. They’ll also be able to print material for a “reasonable” per-page fee. Public libraries will be allowed one terminal per building; for universities, it’s based on enrollment.
There’s a lot that’s vague here, and, frankly I’d hate to have to manage that one terminal in a busy public library. But one problem dwarfs all others: school libraries aren’t in the running for Public Access Service.
The American Library Association—along with the Association of Research Libraries—plans to file, by May 5, an amicus brief that will express the concerns of librarians about the settlement, covering issues such as privacy, intellectual freedom, and equitable treatment. That’s all well and good, but let’s make sure the needs of our students and K–12 educators make it on to the list. In fact, they should head it. After all, we’re talking about something that could well become the world’s largest online body of human knowledge.
