i'm an open content cheerleader. i love the folks over at the gutenberg project. i was all excited when i heard about a project to make all public domain newspapers available online.
when google decided to digitize and scan a huge trove of books from the harvard, stanford, and oxford libraries, i was happy as a pig in shit. novelty always has its irrational detractors. michael gorman, dean of library services at Cal State Fresno, weighs in on google's plan with a hysterical, the sky-is-falling reaction. granted, google's new initiative isn't an open content effort. much of the material they plan to digitize is under copyright.
i still think this is a great thing. it doesn't spell the end of libraries in my opinion. if anything, it should expand any wired library's ability to function as a research center. it should also be a boon to those people who don't live near any public libraries. in other words, digitization of books would actually widen access to scholarly information. i thought that was what libraries were all about.
[link via kevin drum, whose strong reaction to gorman's reaction is out of the bounds of his normally mild-mannered commentary]
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