Intellectual Property Law

Did Google Use Librarians?

By Siva Vaidhyanathan

This blogger thinks so. Here is an excerpt of the linked post:

Exactly one year ago today, the Google Librarian Central blog was updated. There hasn?t been another blog post since. That?s 365 days of no public communication with the librarian community. I?ve also asked around and found out that Google did not have an exhibit at ALA this year. The last Google Librarian Newsletter was in May of 2007.

Google realized that in order to index the world?s data, they needed access to the billions of books held in libraries throughout the world. So, their marketing department (those sly dogs) decided to buddy up with ALA and the entire library community to gain access to these print treasures so that they can scan and index them. Before realizing that they needed to do this, Google didn?t chat with librarians directly since the early days of the service (circa 1996-1998), as they needed us then as well.

Full post as published by SIVACRACY .NET on July 01, 2008 (boomark / email).