In a Los Angeles Times article last month, ALA-president-elect Michael Gorman opposed massive digitizing of entire books except in special cases such as references works. Wham! Along comes this reply from Kevin Drum, a blogger for the Washington Monthly:
How can a scholar possibly have such a narrow mind–and a scholar of books, no less? Suggesting that Google should limit itself to reference books and leave everything else alone bespeaks a paucity of both spirit and vision that’s staggering. And what’s sadder still, it appears to be based on the defensive and Luddite notion that Google intends to put libraries–and librarians–out of business. I wonder if Gorman’s 15th century forebears opposed the spread of the printing press on similar grounds?
I have no idea whether Google’s initiative will eventually be successful. But I do know that digitizing and indexing vast stores of knowledge will be a boon to scholars on dozens of levels, as well as a source of knowledge and fascination to the rest of us.
Will we all read entire books online? Or print them out? Probably not. But when I use a brick-and-mortar library I don’t always do that either. I browse. I peek into books. I take notes from chapters here and there. A digitized library allows me to do the same thing, but with vastly greater scope and vastly greater focus.
I wonder if there’s still time for the ALA to un-elect Mr. Gorman as its upcoming president? He’s an embarrassment to their profession.
A commenter chimed in: “This crusty librarian will be replaced by a grad student, and go to his grave bitterly defending the way things used to be.” To the credit of the library profession, I also spotted at least one-pro-e-book comment from a librarian “grateful for things like Project Gutenberg” and convinced that the Google Project can “only be a good thing.”
(Found via archivists-talk list.)
