Google and the 'Elephant Library'

As the generation Y-ers who like to consume any advanced technology, I would like to say that Google is one of the most powerful search engine that I preferred. Imagine when your tutor ask you to provide at least 5 references in your essay writing, will you go to library and borrow the 5 thick books and bring it back home? For me personally, google-ing is more effective rather than finding manually inside your text book. According to NPD, 95% of google users finding what they are searching for all or most of the time, and eight in 10 users choosing Google because it delivers the best results.

NPD Online Research, in which Google placed first overall among 13 search and portal sites for user satisfaction and loyalty.

The Elephant Library

A reading from The NY Times article 'An Elephant Backs Up Google's Library', discussed about google books library project that gives users access to the complete text of books that are in the public domain, and the snippets of books that are protected by copyrights. The library project called as Hathi Trust, which is means in Hindi for elephant, an animal that is said to never forget. It includes libraries at 12 Midwestern universities like the University of Michigan, the University of lowa and the University of Illinois, plus the 11 libraries of the University of California system. They aimed to make easier for people to find relevant books especially the books that they wouldn't find any other way such as those that are out of print. Meanwhile, its respecting authors and publishers' copyrights.

The Google Books project is aiming to scan and digitise millions of titles, making them searchable online

Sources: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/651136/Google-Books-project-to remove-European-titles.html

How Google Books Library Project does looks like?

Full view: we can available to see every pages of the books because it's out of privacy or the publisher/author has asked permission for fully viewable

Limited Preview: only can see a limited number of pages if the publisher/ author has given permission

Snippet View: similar like a card catalog, only can allow to display a few sentence that you search in context.

No Preview Available: we only able to see basic information about the book.

Source: http://books.google.com/googlebooks/screenshots.html#fullview

And it affect us!

Lots of controversial happened towards this project in term of copyright law. A comment from Nick Taylor, president of the New York - based Authors Guild, "This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law," which is seeking class action status. "It's not up to Google or anyone other than the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide whether and how their works will be copied." However, when we look at the viewer side like me, I won't think so much about the law, as long I could enjoy the efficiency that google gave to me.

Like Cope & Kalantiz, 2000, said, in the realm of literacy education there is much discussion of the textual shift, and thus 'paradigm shift' (Bearne, 2003) that has occurred for today's students whose environment is filled with visual, electronice and digital texts, those texts that are referred to as 'multimodal'. This is the reason why lots of people will like to go for internet and google as the preference.

Supported by Morkes & Nielsen 1997, in their study of how people read on the web, they found out that people prefer to scan rather than read, want text to be short and to the point, and detest overly hyped promotional writing. In this case, Google has tried to shift the theory from Morkes & Nielsen because Google used the full-text searchable as possible through a virtual or electronic card catalog. In the other words, it has fit the convenient for reader to find out the key point on the reading itself. I think Google has affect the readers and block us from reading a text if it wanted to. Therefore, I think Google and the 'Elephant Library' has succeed finding the demand of the generations Y wants.

References:

Google Books Library Project - An enhanced card catalog of the world's books, retrieved online on 15 June 2010, from: http://books.google.com/googlebooks/library.html

Helft, M 2006, An Elephant Backs Up Google's Library, retrieved online on 15 June 2010, from: http://bit.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/an-elephant-backs-up-googles-library/

Mills, E 2005, Authors Guild sues Google over library project, retrieved online on 15 June 2010, from: http://news.cnet.com/Authors-Guild-sues-Google-over-library-project/2100-1030_3-5875384.html

Morkes J & Nielsen, J 1997, Concise, Scannable, and Objective: How to Write for the Web, retrieved online on 15 June 2010, from: htpp://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html

Press Center 1999, Google Ranks First Overall in Third-Party Survey of Search and Portal Users, retrieved online on 15 June 2010, from: http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/pressrelease9.html