At the end of his recent What is Social Cataloging presentation at LIANZA, Tim Spalding of LibraryThing assures us that social cataloging will not result in end of the world scenarios such as teenagers in their underwear cataloging our books, dead kittens, or the end of traditional cataloging. Tim has posted Just the LIS/ranting/inspiration parts! on Vimeo, and it is definitely worth a listen.

I think the idea that social cataloging means “the end of intellectual structures rooted in the limitations of the physical world” is a very important concept. Tim may be overestimating the power of social cataloging to topple the physical paradigm that has ruled libraries for so long, but I do agree that it is time (past time, probably) for a paradigm shift. Social cataloging will hopefully hasten the shift.

Despite sharing some of Tim’s “doom-iness” about the future of libraries, I am encouraged by the fact that many libraries, including my own, are already doing things like exposing their catalog records to Google and other search engines, and allowing linking and bookmarking of catalog records.

Stanford’s new discovery environment SearchWorks does both these things. SearchWorks is based on Blacklight, an open-source application that was originally written at University of Virginia. VuFind is another open source tool, developed at Villanova University, being used by a number of libraries to leverage Web 2.0 in a library discovery environment. I don’t know much about PennTags, but it is an example of a major university library experimenting with social tagging of library materials.

Tim is absolutely right that libraries must recognize the limits of practices rooted in a physical books paradigm and move beyond them. I’m encouraged to see that many leading libraries are already well on the way towards embracing new social tools and new ways of thinking about organizing information. A part of me reacts to Tim’s presentation with “Doesn’t he realize all the cool Web 2.0 stuff libraries are already doing?”; but a bigger part of me welcomes “rants” from library outsiders like Tim Spalding that keep pushing us in the right directions.

Google Books has responded to pressure to provide a way to browse all the available magazine titles. Software Engineer Jeffrey Peng coded a page that lists all the magazine titles, with a Cover View or List View option.

You can also get a full list by going to Advanced Search, clicking the Magazines radio button (don’t put anything in any search box, and leave All Books checked); then hit Google Search. Again, you can switch between List View and Cover View (links in the top right of results page).

Our reference staff had just been talking about the heavy use students in Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric are making of the magazine archives in Google Books, and how helpful a “browse title” feature would be. Kudos to Google for making this happen and responding to user feedback.

Now if they could only do something similar for Google Scholar, so you could browse a list of all available journal titles … that would be really cool.

I just tried requesting the The Stanford-Lockheed Meyer Library Flood Report through my local public library (ironically, the report is not available at any of the Stanford Libraries). All I got was a message that said: “Sorry, no copies available to request.”
I poked around (‘cuz that’s what librarians do) and figured out that they have a cooperative agreement with only one of the four owning libraries, and the copy of the report in that library is checked out and not due until February 10, 2010. I don’t get any options to put a hold on it, only a message that says “Sorry, no copies available for request”. To most people I know, that pretty much means the report is not available.

Why request a copy of the Stanford-Lockheed flood report? Because Google said it wasn’t available.

In an op-ed piece about Google Books in the New York Times, Sergey Brin claimed that “the vast majority of books ever written are not accessible to anyone except the most tenacious researchers at premier academic libraries.” In support of that argument, he noted that The Stanford-Lockheed Meyer Library Flood Report is no longer available.

It didn’t take long for the library community to cry foul–noting that WorldCat shows that four (yep–four whole copies) of the report are available. To many in the library community, Brin’s lie/laziness/shoddy research (pick your favorite) rendered the entire op-ed and his entire argument false.

Lorcan Dempsey offers a slightly more nuanced approach, noting that “on a closed mailing list in which I participate, one commenter argued that this level of availability meant that the volume was actually not available in any ‘practical sense’.” Dempsey himself concedes that “Certainly, if the report were available through Google Books (or some other network level repository of digital books), its availability would be greatly amplified.”

Dempsey talks about “grades of availability”, but in the end, he still insists on setting the record straight:

That said, it seemed to me (as it did to the librarians on the web4lib discussion list) that saying that this volume was no longer available was a stronger statement than the situation warranted. I could go with ‘not easily available’, but ‘no longer available’ was too much …

And as I sat there looking at something being called a muskrat, I wanted to say, no, it is a beaver …. ;-)

 

The truth is, no matter how much work we put into exposing our collections, and making InterLibrary Borrowing procedures more seamless, an item that is available in only 4 libraries is not available in any meaningful sense of the word to the vast majority of people.

Would it have been more accurate for Brin parse his claim as Dempsey suggests? Sure. Would it have been more effective if Brin had asked a reference librarian to find him an example of an item that was absolutely unavailable (i.e. no circulating copies available anywhere)? You bet. Is it sad to me that the library community has latched on to this detail at the cost of seeing the bigger truth that digitizing books and making them available online dramatically increases availability? Very, very sad.

When librarians tell other librarians “Oh look—the Stanford-Lockheed report is actually available in 4 libraries, so Google is wrong!”, we pat each other on the back and feel vindicated. When we say stuff like that to someone who gets a message “Sorry, no copies available to request.”, they’re going to look at us like we just don’t get it. Because we don’t.

Some recent writings and key quotes in defense of the Google Books settlement:

Forbes–In Defense of Google Books:

By scanning the books, Google took us to a real-world discussion of how to get these volumes into the digital world in some way that we can live with. It is questionable whether we would have gotten there without such a bold move.

Slate–Save the Google Book Search Deal:

The critics’ premise is that the monopoly that the settlement creates is invaluable—and that without the settlement, we can create a competitive market for putting out-of-print books online. But I fear that’s a fantasy that misrepresents the options.

Wired–A Writer’s Plea: Figure Out How to Preserve Google Books:

I’m also working on a book about the history of (what we now call) green technology… And without Google Books, I’m not sure it would have been possible to write it. At the very least, my contribution to the book world would have been smaller and shallower.

The searchability, accessibility and breadth of the Google Books collection do not just portend some future best-ever digital library. It’s already the best resource for research that exists.

And a full round-up of filings in the Google Books case:
The Google Books Settlement: Who Is Filing And What Are They Saying? (PDF)