Will Google Book Search Help Or Hurt Libraries And Book Sales? by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (Jan 5)
Summarizes and comments on an article in the New York Times - Google Hopes to Open a Trove of Little-Seen Books by Motoko Rich (Jan 4)
Of interest - Google is recording how Book Search is used. For example, "Users are already taking advantage of out-of-print books that have been scanned and are available for free download. Mr. Clancy was monitoring search queries recently when one for “concrete fountain molds” caught his attention. The search turned up a digital version of an obscure 1910 book, and the user had spent four hours perusing 350 pages of it."
Some people worry how this will affect reading habits - "Some scholars worry that Google users are more likely to search for narrow information than to read at length. “I have to say that I think pedagogically and in terms of the advancement of scholarship, I have a concern that people will be encouraged to use books in this very fragmentary way,” said Alice Prochaska, university librarian at Yale."
Posted by Gwen at January 7, 2009 02:12 AM