Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] NGC4LIB Digest - 25 Mar 2010 to 26 Mar 2010 (#2010-65)

From: "Montibello, Joseph P." <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2010 08:41:54 -0400

Heyhey,

Jim W. wrote:
<snip>Unfortunately, the current library answer that we need to build a
tool so that people can "find-identify-select-obtain -->
works-expressions-manifestations-items by their authors-titles-subjects"
seems to be totally irrelevant to any solution and is certainly not
aimed at providing our users what they want. Even if RDA were completely
finished today, all the librarians were trained perfectly and the
systems installed and functioning, I can't imagine how it would change
anything for our patrons at all.
</snip>

I'm going to assume that the Google Books agreement will be approved
soon and that questions of its fairness/evilness/apocalypticness(1) are
moot.

On Google's page about the settlement, they say "the agreement also
creates opportunities for researchers to study the millions of volumes
in the Book Search index. Academics will be able to apply through an
institution to run computational queries through the index without
actually reading individual books."

Would it make sense for OCLC, as one good-sized player in the library
world, to find some way to become a middleman? Would it help if they
somehow got an agreement with Google allowing librarians to run queries
against the Book Search index, and develop tools that work with it?

Librarians have always been more about adding value to a group of items
than about creating a group of items.  If Google is going to create this
service and sell it (and if we can't stop them from doing so, which I'm
pretty positive we can't), can we do something to add value to the
service for our patrons?  

And if we do, is that better than improving the typewriters?

(1) http://www.techxav.com/2010/03/04/the-google-books-monster/

Joe Montibello, MLIS
Class of 1945 Library
Phillips Exeter Academy
web: http://www.exeter.edu/library
blog: http://academylibrary.wordpress.com