Google Co-founder Writes Article in NY Times on Google Books

It was very considerate of Google co-founder Sergey Brin to write his New York Times Op-Ed piece just in time for our class on Google!  (If NY Times blocks access, class members can look it up in here or here.)


His description of the modern day preservation of printed material reminds me of a scene from medieval Europe, in which a handful of monks copy books by hand in an abbey, while barbarian hordes sack and pillage the countryside, using folios for kindling and toilet paper...

Books written after 1923 quickly disappear into a literary black hole. With rare exceptions, one can buy them only for the small number of years they are in print. After that, they are found only in a vanishing number of libraries and used book stores. As the years pass, contracts get lost and forgotten, authors and publishers disappear, the rights holders become impossible to track down. Inevitably, the few remaining copies of the books are left to deteriorate slowly or are lost to fires, floods and other disasters.

His point is that Google's effort to digitize books will preserve them, and make them more easily available.   Digitization could certainly make book content more easily searchable, and instantly available. But he also seems to think that printed books are pretty much useless.  "...Even if our cultural heritage stays intact in the world’s foremost libraries, it is effectively lost if no one can access it easily."   While it is true that digitizing text makes it more efficient to access, I think it is an exaggeration to imply that civilization would be lost, without Google Books.    "Because books are such an important part of the world’s collective knowledge and cultural heritage, Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, first proposed that we digitize all books a decade ago," Brin writes.  


Brin's take on this is overblown.  For centuries, people have read books, even though they were not instantly available from anywhere on earth, and even though instant Boolean logic text searches were impossible.  Digitizing books should make them easier to access, but even if they are not digitized, Brin is exaggerating the danger to world culture of not digitizing them.  The full version of a New Yorker article quotes Barry Diller as saying, after an interview with Brin and Page "I left thinking that more than most people they were wildly self-possessed."  Brin's Op-ed piece seems to support this.


Brin also mentions a book which he says is no longer available, The Stanford-Lockheed Meyer Library Flood Report.  But technically, it is available.  After a search of less than a minute at the state library system web site, I found four copies of it, the nearest at the New York Botanical Garden.  

Author Buchanan, Sally. Title The Stanford-Lockheed Meyer Library flood report / Sally Buchanan, Phillip Leighton, Leon Davies. Imprint [Stanford, Ca.] : Stanford University Libraries ; 1980. Rating

LOCATION	CALL #	STATUS
Bindery Library	Z701.3.F55 B83 1980	CHECK SHELF

Phys Descr 56 p. : ill. ; 28 cm. Note Cover title. Bibliog. Includes bibliographical references (p. 28) and index. Subject Books -- Conservation and restoration. Restorative drying. Flood damage prevention. Flood damage. Other Auth Leighton, Phillip, Davies, Leon A. Stanford University. Libraries. Other Titl Meyer Library flood report

However, here is where Brin does have a good point:  Driving to the Bronx to check out the book  would take much of the day (and the Botanical Garden's library is closed Sunday and Monday), reading it there would take all day, and interlibrary loan, (if it is available) could take days if not weeks for the book to arrive in my town.  Downloading the book online could take a matter of seconds.  Whether Google does it or somebody else does it, I suspect the future holds a greater number of digital books, and a lesser number of printed books.