Google and librarians [edited]

Some big name bloggers are wondering if Google "cares" about libraries and librarians. See here and here. My take? They care enough at least to work with libraries to access to their books for the Google Books project. But even this project is suspect. They have their mission (profit) and we have ours (access). While we can appreciate the power of Google's capital to do the big projects we can't do, we can't lose sight of the divergent missions.

By the way, here are some readings if you want to learn more about the Google Books project or ebooks in general:

• Crane, Gregory. What Do You Do with a Million Books? D-Lib Magazine 12 (3) (March 2006).
• Lynch, Clifford. The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World. First Monday 6 (6) (June 2001).
• Kelly, Kevin. Scan This Book! The New York Times. (May 14, 2006).
• Levy, Steven. The Future of Reading. Newsweek (November 26, 2007).
• Schaffhauser, Dian. Google Book Search: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly. Campus Technology. (January 1, 2008).
  
• Toobin, Jeffrey. Google’s Moon Shot: The quest for the universal library. The New Yorker. (February 5, 2007).