Thomas Mann's misleading article on Google Print

In the August 2005 issue of American Libraries, pages 45-46, Thomas Mann criticizes Google Print in an article titled "Google Print vs. Onsite Collections," saying that it is no replacement for a classed catalog, serendipitous browsing, and the ability to "recognize" information by browsing book stacks. I have a lot of respect for Mann, I've read his book Library Research Models two or three times. But he really misses the mark in this article. I sent the following brief letter to the AL editors.

Despite my professional respect for Thomas Mann, he drew some unfair and unfortunate conclusions in his article "Google Print vs. Onsite Collections" in August's American Libraries. He fails to disclose some significant assumptions upon which his argument is based and he over-generalizes his conclusions. The end result is yet another article that characterizes Google as the enemy of libraries without analyzing the potential benefits of digital resources in libraries.

When he says digitizing books "would entail the unintended consequence of destroying the systematic subject access to them" he is suggesting that digitized books can not be added to the library catalog, which is untrue. Many research libraries have thousands of catalog records which provide controlled subject access as well as classified arrangement for e-books from online publishers.

When he argues for the value of "…recognition versus prior specification…" he fails to mention that the limitations on viewing all pages of a book from the Google Print project are due to copyright limitations, not technical limitations. Besides Google Print, there are a number of e-book collections that do allow users to view the entire full-text of the book, and thus enabling the "recognition" function that Mr. Mann values so much.

He paints a world where Google is at odds with traditional libraries instead of exploring the benefits that digital library technologies can provide patrons. Digital collections remove time and space as barriers to collections. Ironically, the same issue of American Libraries points out that "public libraries struggle to meet internet demand." Forward-looking librarians will see this as an opportunity to serve our patrons by working to provide improved online content. Finally, his criticisms of Google illustrates that libraries should be doing more to promote Open Access publishing, in which access to high quality publications is freely available.

Steven J. Miller comments on "Cataloging and Organizing Digital Resources"

Steve Miller is an academic librarian in the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee's Golda Meir Library and senior lecturer at the School of Information Studies. I have worked with him on the Networked Resources and Metadata Interest Group of ALCTS. He developed the integrating resources cataloging course for the SCCTP, and I hold his opinion in high regard. I sent him a review copy of our book and he recently sent me his comments. This is posted in its entirety with his permission:

Brian,

Thanks again for sending me a complementary copy of your book Cataloging and Organizing Digital Resources. I've read the entire book and like it very much. In fact, I'm planning to use it as a text in a new course I'm proposing for the Spring 06 semester, assuming the course is approved and has enough enrollees, which I think it will.

You and Anne Mitchell did a very good job of giving an overview of the details of cataloging digital resources in the three types of issuance, hitting all the major points and variations that I would want to cover in my class, and included some excellent examples. This is the content I'm most familiar with, having created workshops on it myself.

What I especially like and appreciate about the book is your first four chapters. I have not to date found anything that has gathered together and systematically organized this type of information about digital resources in libraries at this level. And to include that in a text that also deals with cataloging, and provides a broader context for the details of MARC cataloging --this is a real service. I found that virtually all the topics I had in mind to cover in my class have been included in your book. And some of what were to date rather jumbled in my own mind, before I had started to organize them for my class, I found that you had already organized and explained, in such a way that I learned quite a bit and understand them more clearly now myself. This was especially the case for me with Chapter 3.

I also like the general layout of the book and the inclusion of what are in effect glossary definitions in boxes in the margins right on the page where the concept is being discussed.

So, congratulations on a job well done, and thanks for writing this book! I will get good use out of it for my class.

Best regards,
Steve