From the Los Angeles Times....  (December 17, 2004)

COMMENTARY Google and God's Mind The problem is, information
isn't knowledge.

By Michael Gorman, Michael Gorman is dean of library services
at Cal State Fresno and president-elect of the American Library
Assn.

 The boogie-woogie Google boys, it appears, dream of taking over
the universe by gathering all the "information" in the world and
creating the electronic equivalent of, in their own modest words,
"the mind of God." If you are taken in by all the fanfare and
hoopla that have attended their project to digitize all the books
in a number of major libraries (including the University of Michigan
and New York Public), you would think they are well on their way
to godliness. 

 I do not share that opinion. The books in great libraries are
much more than the sum of their parts. They are designed to be
read sequentially and cumulatively, so that the reader gains knowledge
in the reading. 

 A good scholarly book on, say, prisons in 19th century France
goes well beyond simply supplying facts. Just imagine that book
digitized and available for Googling. Google isn't saying exactly
how such a search would work, but if it's anything like the current
system, you might enter, say, "Nantes+Prisons" and get back hundreds
of thousands of "hits." Somewhere in those hundreds of thousands
would be a reference to a paragraph or more in our book. If you
found it, what would you do with it? Supposing it says " . there
were few murderers in the prisons of Nantes in 1874 . " and gives
you the source of the paragraph. That is all but useless. Absent
a lot more searching, you have no idea whether there are other
references to the subject in the book, and the "information" you
have found is almost meaningless out of context. 

 So, you abandon that line of inquiry or resolve to read the book.
Are you going to do that online, assuming it's out of copyright?
(In the Google scheme, hundreds of thousands of books in copyright
will not be available to be read as a whole.) Not many would choose
to stare at a screen long enough to do that. 

 Are you going to print the book, and end up with 500 unbound
sheets? Or will you request the actual book (in copyright or out)
through the active and developed interlibrary lending system that
supplies thousands of books daily to scholars, researchers and
dilettantes worldwide? The latter involves a short wait, of course.
We all know that, in Googleworld, speed is of the essence, but
it is not to most scholarly research in the real world. 

 The nub of the matter lies in the distinction between information
(data, facts, images, quotes and brief texts that can be used
out of context) and recorded knowledge (the cumulative exposition
found in scholarly and literary texts and in popular nonfiction).
When it comes to information, a snippet from Page 142 might be
useful. When it comes to recorded knowledge, a snippet from Page
142 must be understood in the light of pages 1 through 141 or
the text was not worth writing and publishing in the first place.

 I am all in favor of digitizing books that concentrate on delivering
information, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias and gazetteers,
as opposed to knowledge. I also favor digitizing such library
holdings as unique manuscript collections, or photographs, when
seeing the object itself is the point (this is reportedly the
deal the New York Public Library has made with Google). I believe,
however, that massive databases of digitized whole books, especially
scholarly books, are expensive exercises in futility based on
the staggering notion that, for the first time in history, one
form of communication (electronic) will supplant and obliterate
all previous forms. 

 It is beyond premature to prepare to mourn the death of libraries
and the death of the book. If I had shares in publishing companies
I would hang on to them. This latest version of Google hype will
no doubt join taking personal commuter helicopters to work and
carrying the Library of Congress in a briefcase on microfilm as
"back to the future" failures, for the simple reason that they
were solutions in search of a problem. 


 -----------------------------------------------
Reply in the Washington Monthly, by Kevin Drum, Dec. 17, 2004

 GOOGLE AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT....Every once in a while I hear an
idea so blindingly, mind-numbingly blinkered that I want to find
the person responsible and just beat the tar out of him. And no,
for once I'm not talking about Social Security privatization.
 The LA Times features an op-ed today by one Michael Gorman, president-elect
of the American Library Association. His subject is Google's widely
praised initiative to scan and digitize an enormous number of
books from the libraries at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, and others.
 Gorman starts with a reasonable, if pedestrian, observation:
information is not knowledge. Reading bits and pieces of books
out of context is not the same thing as acquiring scholarly appreciation
of a subject area. In fact, uncritically browsing through Google
hits in a subject you're unfamiliar with can be positively misleading
if you're not careful about who and what you read.
 Which is all fine. It's slightly nannyish advice, to be sure
. be sure to eat your vegetables when you use Google! . but it's
basically sound. Unfortunately, Gorman then proceeds to drive
straight over a cliff and explode in a cataclysmic fireball of
ignorance and contempt:
"I am all in favor of digitizing books that concentrate on delivering
information, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias and gazetteers,
as opposed to knowledge....I believe, however, that massive databases
of digitized whole books, especially scholarly books, are expensive
exercises in futility based on the staggering notion that, for
the first time in history, one form of communication (electronic)
will supplant and obliterate all previous forms.
....This latest version of Google hype will no doubt join taking
personal commuter helicopters to work and carrying the Library
of Congress in a briefcase on microfilm as "back to the future"
failures, for the simple reason that they were solutions in search
of a problem."

 How can a scholar possibly have such a narrow mind - and a scholar
of books, no less? Suggesting that Google should limit itself
to reference books and leave everything else alone bespeaks a
paucity of both spirit and vision that's staggering. And what's
sadder still, it appears to be based on the defensive and Luddite
notion that Google intends to put libraries - and librarians -
out of business. I wonder if Gorman's 15th century forebears opposed
the spread of the printing press on similar grounds?

 I have no idea whether Google's initiative will eventually be
successful. But I do know that digitizing and indexing vast stores
of knowledge will be a boon to scholars on dozens of levels, as
well as a source of knowledge and fascination to the rest of us.

 Will we all read entire books online? Or print them out? Probably
not. But when I use a brick-and-mortar library I don't always
do that either. I browse. I peek into books. I take notes from
chapters here and there. A digitized library allows me to do the
same thing, but with vastly greater scope and vastly greater focus.

 I wonder if there's still time for the ALA to un-elect Mr. Gorman
as its upcoming president? He's an embarrassment to their profession.

Kevin Drum 12:13 PM Permalink | TrackBack (5) | Comments (151)