France's Top Librarian Attacks Google Online Library

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by dannubis
the real effort would be to have a huge digital online library that has an independant stature. no single company deciding what translations of what books become available, but an international governamental cooperation.

why governamental ?

well at least you can trust the governement that they won't let their choice of books be guided by the number of hits the titles receive.

Why shouldn't the choice of books be guided by the number of people who are going to view them?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Why shouldn't the choice of books be guided by the number of people who are going to view them?

Because in Academia, popularity is not an indication of usefulness in pushing back the limits of research.

It's even the opposite: as science progresses, it is more and more specialized. And recent works only attract the specialists, while older works, being "classics", will attract many more people from various fields of science.

With my current uni paper, I am experiencing it right now: I'm loosely using de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" (which would have quite a few hits on Google Library), but only in order to give the historic background of my research's topic, and in order to find nicely written quotes.

The actual scientific books I am using (which are indispensable for my research) are much more obscure. That's because there are much fewer people that are interested with detailed current analyses of political behaviour, than people who might want to refer to de Tocqueville. Yet, Tocqueville's book is fairly useless for scientific research, because research bases itself on recent works*

If Google chose its books on a popularity basis, Tocqueville would be favoured, despite his works being completely outdated, and not useful to repel the borders of knowledge anymore.



*There's the caveat that Tocqueville remains a really useful book if you are studying the history of ideas. But this field is very specialized, and most people who look for a Tocqueville reference aren't students of this domain.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Because in Academia, popularity is not an indication of usefulness in pushing back the limits of research.

So? If you're pushing for of all things a government-funded program shouldn't you tailor it to the majority of the population, not a tiny minority?

[dannubis]

no because one should expect from the governement that they provide their population with the very best available online library. and i wouldn't trust a manager who has to make a profit to do this properly.

but in the end, i welcome the effort of google in this matter. as long as they don't try to push away the other existing online libraries.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
So? If you're pushing for of all things a government-funded program shouldn't you tailor it to the majority of the population, not a tiny minority?

The objective of a Great Online Linrary is double: for one, it is to provide literature to people who enjoy reading. For second, it is to provide a great knowledge database to scholars, so that research is made easier.

Unless you consider research to be wholly useless for mankind you will admit that catering the needs of scholars is not the same as pleasing a "tiny minority".

The mass of people are not interested in specialized scientific books, because these books are only intended at a very narrow audience. But when scientists want to make a scientific progress, their important sources are exclusively such books.

Say, you're a scientist who wants to study the evolution of the Californian Salamander. How will you prepare your experiments? Will you:
- look at the latest books and articles on the topics, that tell what research has been conclusively made, and what other research should be done? On the books that compare different methods of observing evolution, and tell which of these methods provide the most reliable results? (books like that are obviously an immense bore to the general public)

- look at the Bible to see what God told about the creation of animals?

If the choice of books was exclusively on a commercial basis, the Bible would be available, and the speicialized books that are actually useful for your research won't. Despite the fact that your research might eventually lead to a betterment of human condition, while the Bible won't.

[DanS]

This discussion isn't anchored in reality. In reality, even though the unpopular pages/books get few hits on an individual basis, the unpopular pages/books form a majority of all hits in aggregate. This is called the "long tail" of the internet.

Google gains a huge commercial advantage by being able to include all of the unpopular books in its database, even if (or especially if) those books are in French. They would happily scan the BNL's books without a single dime coming from the French treasury. It doesn't matter one whit to Google that only a handful of people worldwide are interested in a subject. Indeed, they would be happiest to scan those books, since having those books would make this handful of people Google customers for life.

We shouldn't be surprised by this fact, even though this is counterintuitive, as we've been hammered by mass market realities for a century. After all, the Harvards, Stanfords, and Oxfords of this world have a huge advantage by virtue of having unpopular books in their stacks. They pay big bucks to purchase additional unpopular books for their stacks (more than Google is paying to scan them). And amazon.com has a huge commercial advantage by having so many books available for purchase, even if most of these books are unpopular.

Just look at what Google has done for the internet. Google will happily catalog and even archive the most lowly of web pages. That's why, among other reasons, google.com is the go-to source for search. It's got the longest tail.