NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 27 number 1 - Fall 2006

Google's Not a Library! 2006 I. T. Littleton Seminar

By Scott Warren, Burlington Textiles Library

Cultural historian and media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan spoke before a packed audience at the NCSU Libraries' 2006 I. T. Littleton Seminar, held on May 10, 2006, in the D. H. Hill Library. An assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University, Vaidhyanathan is the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs and The Anarchist in the Library and is a frequent contributor on media and cultural issues in various periodicals including the Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times Magazine, Salon.com, and Nation.

Vaidhyanathan's talk, "'Google's Not a Library!': Why Quality Matters in the Google Book Search Debate," outlined the status of the Google Book Project involving the digitizing of millions of books from the university libraries of Stanford, Michigan, Harvard, and Oxford as well as the New York Public Library. It also focused on the legal and social ramifications of this effort.

Vaidhyanathan argued that libraries should care that the legal challenges to Google's plan turn on copyright and fair use, because these are the legal principles libraries use to provide copyrighted materials for educational use. He described several cautionary issues associated with the digitization of the world's major research libraries by a corporation-privatization of library functions, the possibility of fostering a monopoly situation, and concerns about confidentiality and privacy. He also warned that corporations are short-lived compared to universities, and he speculated about what would happen to these digital books a hundred years from now if Google declined as a business.

Nevertheless, Google's massive economy of scale and financial reserves offers the opportunity to digitize millions of books, which is something not even the largest university libraries can presently accomplish. The project will allow many old and obscure books to be accessed by anyone, anywhere. Vaidhyanathan pointed out that books are the most concentrated repository of human knowledge and that "there is virtue imprinted on the deliberation found in books as opposed to the frantic change that defines blogs and the rest of the Web in general."

Vaidhyanathan concluded that the present system of copyright is broken and represents an inefficient market because ownership of books can be difficult to determine. He finished by asking, "Have digitization and networking already altered assumptions of copyright so much, demanding a flexible and open vision to enable continued technological innovation and use in education, that copyright may cease to exist as 'copy right' and turn into a commercial distribution right?"

In March 2002 Library Journal cited Vaidhyanathan among its "Movers & Shakers" in the library field and said he had "firmly established himself as one of the world's premier thinkers on one of the world's most complex subjects--copyright and intellectual property." After his presentation and a vigorous question-and-answer session, there is no doubt that the audience present at the seminar, including I. T. Littleton, agreed.

The annual I. T. Littleton Seminars are funded by an endowment established in 1987 to honor Littleton upon his retirement from NC State as library director. Anyone who would like to make a voluntary contribution to support future seminars should write a check payable to the Friends of the Library and send it to the NCSU Libraries, Campus Box 7111, NCSU, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695-7111. Please note "I. T. Littleton Seminar Endowment" on the check. For more information, please call (919) 515-2841.