o5. "Fair Use" for Who?

Google Book Search is a tool from Google that searches the full text of books that Google scans and stores in its digital database. The service formerly known as Google Print has caused some contraversy.
View the following video on YouTube(the newest addition to google), read about it and try it out for yourself at http://books.google.com/
View the video: Is Google Book Search "fair use"?
Read about it: http://books.google.com/googleprint/library.html
In your journal answer the following questions:
1. What effect will this library-based digitization have on Google’s relationships with publishers?
2. How have Google’s competitors, such as Yahoo! or Microsoft, respond to this challenge?
3. What impact could this project have on the access to information?
4.Will librarians be threatened by the new development?
5. What do you think?

1. Google's foray into a digital library database will undoubtedly affect its relationships with publishers for the worse. Publishers may feel that their jobs will be put in jeopardy because of the digital library. With access to books available online, it will take away from the need to view these books in person, thus resulting in a decrease in publishing and, ultimately, revenue. The amount of people visiting libraries and bookstores will decrease because the books can be found at home on the Internet via Google Book Search. Who would choose to make a trip to the library or bookstore when the book needed can be found at home without even having to rise from your favourite chair? Google Book Search would cause its relationships with publishers to become severely damaged and nearly irreparable.
2. In response to this challenge, Yahoo! has come up with Yahoo! Print and, similarly, Microsoft has started Microsoft Book Search. As assumed, all three parties have the same goal in mind: provide a digital library database for the human population. The way each party goes about achieving this, however, is entirely different. Microsoft only scans material that is non-copyright and only from the collection of the British Library, The University of California, and The University of Toronto. In doing this, Microsoft minimizes the chance of public criticism, controversy, and - most importantly - law suits. Any copyright material that Microsoft adds to its database shall only be added with the explicit permission of the publisher to avoid any arguments. Yahoo! also takes another approach. Yahoo! scans the whole text, but has a much more limited database as compared to the other two competitors.
3. The impact of the access to information that these digital-based libraries offer will certainly have a large impact on everyone. It not only becomes easier to access books, but it also becomes easier to plagiarize that work as well. The fact that students would have to manually write down every letter of what they want to plagiarize when using books usually discourages them from doing so. People are naturally lazy (the fact that plagiarizing exists is a testimony to that) and usually try to find the easiest and quickest way to do things. Making books accessible on the Internet is practically equivalent to shoving plagiarism into a person's (especially students) face! No hand cramps that result from manually writing for too long, no ink stains, no travelling... the project eliminates every factor that discourages people from plagiarizing. One must remember that while Google Book Search does not give the full text of most books, students do not need the whole book to gather their information. Taking snippets from the book manually is essentially the same thing as reading the snippets off Google Book Search. Sure, it offers people access to a larger access of information to develop a more in-depth knowledge of their topic, but when have we ever not abused the access to information that the Internet offers?
4. When considering that libraries will be affected, one must also consider the effect it has on those associated with the libraries: librarians. It's no secret that libraries aren't exactly the most popular places these days, so any decrease in visitors could spell doomsday for some libraries. If they were to close down, that would put the librarians working at that library out of a job; no cause is good enough to justify job-loss. It is already a hard enough job for librarians to try to entice the majority of the youth back to the library without the added obstacle that Google Book Search presents. At least the youth will come in to check out the occasional book for research in school projects, but Google takes away even that with its Book Search Engine. With all the obstacles facing librarians, their task seems to look more and more like trying to moving mountains.
5. I personally feel that Google Book Search will not aid the cause which librarians have taken up. In fact, I feel that Google Book Search will slowly replace libraries for most of the population. Most people only visit the library in order to search for books for research for their projects. That fact alone eliminates most adults, leaving the youth and the elderly as the main visitors to libraries. Like I said before, it's no big secret that libraries aren't exactly the most popular places for the youth. However, with Google Book Search, those ocassional visits will disappear completely because students don't need a whole book for their research - only snippets. I personally love reading and the library, so I dibn't quite like Google Book Search for taking away the modest business that a library gets. It's such a great place, with so much to offer in terms of information and leisure yet not many people even remember that they have a library in their community. It is indeed a sad state in which we find ourselves now a days.