May
18
Beware the Behemoth
May 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment
 You know it must be dire if the librarians are up in arms about it:
Library orgs warn of “enormous control†of Google
(MobyLives) “In a Library Journal story, Norman Oder reports that three major library organizations, the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), and the Association of Research Libraries, have filed a statement (available here as a PDF) in federal district court sayint that while they’re not opposing the Google Book Search Settlement, the do fear its costs and controls “could compromise fundamental library values such as equity of access to information, patron privacy, and intellectual freedom.â€
The statement also warns the deal might “lead to a restructuring of the publishing industry and a dramatic change to the nature of libraries,†and urged the court to “vigorously exercise … its jurisdiction over the interpretation and implementation of the Settlement.â€
The groups’ main fear derives from the fact that, as Oder writes, the Settlement is structured so that Google and its partners — not the public nor the library community — have “enormous control†of what used to be avaialbe for free in the libraries.”
Speaking of giant entities, Â ReadWhale is a new creature swimming the sea of the written word. Shall we ride that whale or swim quickly out of its way? Can’t I just find a random old classic at the local book store, crack it open, and just read it? And by Read it, I mean read it without hypertext vocabularly, computer narration, and a twitter button?
Here’s a little extra for today: Some News and Notes from the publishing world (from Fresh Ink) -
Amazon, as was rumored, is coming out with a bigger, pricier version of its Kindle electronic book-reading device. The Kindle DX, with a rotating 9.7-inch screen, will go on sale sometime this summer for $489. The device holds up to 3,500 books, periodicals and documents. By comparison, the smaller Kindle 2, unveiled just a few months ago, holds up to 1,500 books.
Cormac McCarthy, author of “The Road” and “No Country for Old Men,” has won the PEN/Saul Bellow Award – worth $25,000 – for lifetime achievement in American fiction.
Ann Dunham, President Obama’s mother, will have her dissertation posthumously published in December by Duke University Press. Dunham completed her anthropological study, “Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia,” at the University of Hawaii in 1992. She died in 1995.
Alfred Appel Jr., the renowned expert on Vladimir Nabokov, died Sunday at age 75 in Evanston, Ill. Appel wrote the “The Annotated Lolita” in 1970 and “Nabokov’s Dark Cinema” in 1974.
More news and notes here.