Sheryl Legaspi November 2, 2008 The Googlization of Libraries: Is It a Good or Bad Thing?

A comparison of the long and arduous history of libraries with the rapid ascent of helps explain why Google sometimes appears to behave like an impatient adolescent when it comes to achieving its goal of laying claim to all the world’s knowledge. Even before the inventors of Google were born, the idea of access was already a high priority in the minds of librarians. In the 1970s, a noted librarian wrote, “Today the most damning charge which one can bring against the library is to call it a storehouse and the librarian its keeper.”1 By the 1980s, the importance of knowledge creation had already taken hold in the library: “…the truly important function of the academic library – for the university and the nation- is to facilitate the acquisition and production of knowledge.”2 By the 1990s, five new laws of librarianship were promoted to move the library into the digital age:3

1. Libraries serve humanity. 2. Respect all forms by which knowledge is communicated. 3. Use technology intelligently to enhance services. 4. Protect free access to knowledge. 5. Honor the past and create the future.

While Google’s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”4 is a grand and noble one, it is not new, and Google engineers need to take heed and learn from the experts in the library field that “information does not automatically compile itself into knowledge.”5 The relationship between libraries and Google should not be defined as an adversarial one as indicated in the title of the article “Submit or Resist: Librarianship in the Age of Google,” but rather as one of mutual respect with complementary goals and services. Perhaps the question is not so much whether it is good or bad for libraries to be Googlized but rather wouldn’t it be good for Google to be a bit more library-ized. Unlike the library’s slow evolution over thousands of years from private collections of the wealthy class to publically funded collections and services for all people, Google has had a swift rise from its humble beginnings moving in a quite different direction from a public access focused anti-advertising stance to an advertising revenue seeking corporation. What began in 1998 as a twinkle in the eyes of two Stanford University graduate students working out of a garage has turned into a “” valued at over four billion dollars.6 The magic of its advertising appeal lay in its ability to do relevancy matching of ads with users’ search terms. In 2000, these ads took the form of short phrases in the right margin of Google pages.7 By 2002, these unobtrusive ads were generating 400 million in revenue.8 By 2006, Google had acquired YouTube with plans for trial links to video ads.9 Google has taken on indexing of news, books, scholarly journals, street maps, satellite images, corporate financial information, patents and more. In 2008, Google is marketing its web based services to students via Google buses and free t-shirts across college campuses by promoting elaborately accessorized personal information indexing and wooing faculty and administrators with cloud computing.10 Users can use Google to store photos, videos, email, calendars, word docs, spreadsheets, presentation slides, bookmarks of favorite webpages, discussion groups, personal blogs, instant messaging, social networks, and stock portfolios.11 Moreover, like icing on the cake, Google’s ever expanding menu of services can be accessed by anyone from anywhere and allow for online, real time collaboration in a virtual environment. “It is possible that Google is using as many as a million Sheryl Legaspi November 2, 2008 computers for its operations, harnessed together to create effectively a super computer, the world’s largest.”12 Amidst all the fanfare, the questions of users’ privacy, protection of intellectual property, and vulnerability to data-mining have yet to be addressed. Part of Google’s popularity is its image of risk-taking and innovation. “Google is in the enviable position of being able to afford additions to its information collections that may not produce profits, and may not even produce revenue.”13 Thus, it is in the habit of experimenting without worrying about funding or dictates of external constituencies including copyright laws. Because Google can release beta versions of products without the pressure to perfect them first, it is used to moving from idea to product swiftly.14 When it comes up against a roadblock it appears to use creative problem solving without outside consultation. As Google lunges forward, it ruffles many tail feathers including those of authors and publishers. One example of this bungee-jump philosophy is evident in its initiative to digitize all 32 million titles listed in Worldcat despite the estimated cost of 1.5 billion dollars. When Google ran into copyright problems, instead of stalling the project and patiently working out issues with publishing companies, it bounced back with various levels of access.15 It provided “full preview” for books in the public domain, “limited preview” for copyrighted works that it had received limited permission for, and “snippet preview” for copyrighted works that it had no permission for, and then for works that had yet to be indexed, it ingeniously added “no preview” which provided instead supplementary information gleaned from the web such as reviews and indexes.16 Google believes that even at its current pace, it will take 300 years to achieve its grand mission.17During that time, perhaps Google will do some maturing and understand that it can both contribute to and learn from the wisdom and experience libraries have to offer. Libraries are well aware that Google-like search capabilities have become the expectation of a large majority of library users. LIBQUAL+ surveys have shown that users want full text availability, results ranking, and meta-search capability.18 Google’s ease of use makes it the public’s search tool of choice. In fact, in one study comparing Cornell University reference librarians and Google users showed “reference librarians with their vastly larger collections of quality print and collection information, years of experience and professional training scored little better than Internet users offering answers on .”19 Rather than get defensive, Reynolds advises that librarians become expert Google searchers by learning syntax via Google help pages and regular practice.20 According to Reynolds, Google has 28 different operators including quotation marks for phrase search, ~ for pseudonyms, and * for wildcard searching.21 He also suggests using meta-data in searches to limit to target domains, such as site:gov (intitle: database|inurl:database) which yields useful information in federal government databases.22 In addition, Reynolds suggests that librarians create quality research tools using Google’s custom search engine (CSE) features. “We need to be able to not only fully exploit the Internet, but we must also use our knowledge and experience to create tools like CSEs and others that may prove useful.”23 One example of a CSE is WWI: Diaries of the Great War at http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=014997348189176913774%3A_b4nqqxhk2k.24 One of Google’s most vocal critics, Peter Jacso, recently admitted that Google has some merit for information seekers. He states that Google is a “great help in the resource discovery process and can often lead users to primary documents in their library in print or digital format.”25 He also acknowledges Google’s provision of free access to full text documents from a large and diverse database. Another well known expert in the field, Carol Tenopir, states, “ does not make the library obsolete – it is intertwined with collections by linking to OCLC member libraries for books and to subscriptions for journal access. It does not replace Sheryl Legaspi November 2, 2008 library collections. It expands access.”26 Clearly, libraries do not need or want to be Googlized. Instead libraries can master the art of using Google tools and capitalize on the best that Google has to offer to enrich library resources and expand the knowledge base. Google, on the other hand, can learn from libraries that speedy access to millions of hits does not equate with quality results nor do copious amounts of information equal knowledge. Google is an expert in the technology business but cannot supplant the important role libraries play in society helping people connect with quality information and gain the knowledge they want and need.

1 Jesse Shera, “The Role of the Library in the Social Process,” The Foundations of Education for Librarianship (New York: Becker and Hayes, 1972), 139. 2 Pauline Wilson, “Mission and Information: What Business are We In?” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 14 (May 1988): 86. 3 Michael Gorman, “Five New Laws of Librarianship,” American Libraries (September 1995): 784-785. 4 Randall Stross, Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know (New York: Free Press, 2008), 9. 5Ibid., 84. 6 Ibid., 3. 7 Ibid., 4. 8 Ibid., 5. 9 Ibid., 2. 10 Jeffrey R. Young, “3 Ways that Web-Based Computing will Change College Campuses - and Challenge Them,” The Chronicle for Higher Education (October 31, 2008): A16. 11 Stross, 6. 12 Ibid., 12. 13 Ibid., 15. 14 Ibid., 179. 15 Ibid., 107. 16Ibid., 107. 17 Ibid., 200. 18 Gail Herrera, “Meta-Searching and Beyond: Implementation Experiences and Advice from an Academic Library,” Information Technology and Libraries 26 (June 2007): 44. 19 R. Philip Reynolds and Stephen F. Austin, “The Librarian as Hacker, Getting More from Google,” Brick and Mortar Libraries Symposium Proceedings (November 2, 2007): 81. 20 Philip R. Reynolds, “Things to Do Before Session,” Electronic Resources and Libraries (February 2007)[available online at http://electronic librarian.org/forum/2007/02/07things-to-read-before-session/]. 21 Reynolds and Austin, p. 84. 22 Ibid., 84. 23 Ibid., 85. 24 Ibid., 86. 25 Peter Jacso, “Google Scholar Revisited,” Online Information Review 32 (2008): 102-114. 26 Carol Tenopir, “Google in the Academic Library,” Library Journal 130 (February 2005): 32.