Google Books + On demand printing and binding = a radical revision of how production and distribution of books works?
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/zyNSap5XSv0″ width=”425″ height=”344″ allowfullscreen=”true” fvars=”fs=1″ /]
Google, with its mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” plans to turn itself into the biggest bookstore the world has ever known, and to make libraries pay for acting as its agents. It’s troubling that the libraries that already have the richest collections will also be the ones that can offer their users the full Google service. Harvard was one of Google’s original partners. But Robert Darnton, Harvard’s librarian and a fan and creator of digital projects, has ceased supplying books still in copyright to Google. As he has written, “To digitize collections and sell the product in ways that fail to guarantee wide access … would turn the Internet into an instrument for privatizing knowledge that belongs in the public sphere.” Other Google partner libraries, however, support the settlement and have criticized Darnton’s decision.