Libraries in the Age of Google

Paul N. Courant Wolverine Caucus

Lansing, MI 17 April 2012

Introduction: Revolutions in the

Library

The Library Image  source:  UNC  School  of  Information  &  Library  Science  

What does the Academic Library do?

Supports scholarship

- Provides relevant information/materials to students and faculty

- Provides reliable, stable, approximately permanent access to the scholarly record and associated source material. Authentic and secure.

Used to go together, now not so much.

Publication and Scholarship

Ideas must be conveyed to qualify as ideas

Polls

Articles

Experiments

Statistics

Books

Reports

And without libraries, that which we know (knew) gets lost

Progress You can t make it or sustain it without a library

In fact, you can t do much without a library*

*I get to define do, much, and library

Sharing

The Library is for Everyone -- Stephen Clark

You are here

Some economics of libraries

What does this mean?

Cost for users: relatively low

- Time - Research - Travel

Cost for libraries: relatively high

- Building - Infrastructure - Maintenance - Staff - Acquisitions - And so on...

Public Goods Samuelson on public goods: “Each individual’s consumption of that good leads to no subtraction from any other individual’s consumption of that good.” Jefferson on information:

“Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He

who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine,

receives light without darkening me.”

“Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.”

You are here

Digitization can change it all

Annual Cost of Storing a Book

Open Stack: $4.26 High Density $ .86 (but not as usable) HathiTrust $ .15 (average) Big Potential Saving

A fact about our world

Except  for  the  most  arcane  materials  and  users,  that  which  is  not  available  online  will  simply  not  be  read.  

Copyright

The goal of copyright

“ promote  the  Progress  of  Science  and  the  useful  Arts,  by  securing  for  

limited  times  to  Authors  and  Inventors  the  exclusive  right  to  their  respective  Writings  and  Discoveries  .  .  .”  

 

United  States  Constitution,  Article  I  

The  original  requirements  for  gaining  copyright  protection  (i.e.,  registration,  publication,  &  limited  scope  and  endurance)  were  more  consistent  with  “learning”  and  promoting  access  than  with  promoting  property.  

Copyright  

The length of copyright Copyright, the good old days:

Copyright today:

14 years 14 years

And you had to register

Life of the author +70 years

No registration required (unless you want to sue)

Data  source:  Congressional  Research  Service,  Copyright  Term  Extension:  Estimating  the  Economic  Values  

Copyrights between 55 and 75 years old that were still valuable in 1998

The street value of copyright

Plausibly in copyright: 66.6% Public Domain: 28.4%

UM’s print collection: 7.3 million volumes

Unknown: 5%

Out of print = 95%

Now copying is cheap

Once upon a time, copying (aka printing) was

expensive

Now, also cheap

Distributing copies was expensive

The business model no longer fits the business(es).

Cheap copying ought to help

Publication facilitates collaboration, standing on the shoulders of both giants and the vertically challenged, which is the fundamental method And new information technology greatly reduces the cost of publication, improving access across time and space . . . .

Google & HathiTrust

Google Books Project

Google Settlement Access for our Campus Public Benefits - Print Disabilities - Public Library Kiosks - Browsing in the “Bookstore” Research Corpus Collection Management

Google Settlement Controversy

Monopoly Orphan Works Pipe Dreams of Various Flavors - Nonprofits should & would have done it - Should have been public policy Current state of play

What’s in HathiTrust?

10,110,821 total volumes 5,372,802 book titles 266,547 serial titles

3,538,787,350 pages 453 terabytes

120 miles 8,215 tons

2,803,202 volumes (~28% of total) in the public domain

30

Language Distribution (1) The top 10 languages make up ~86% of all content.

*As of June 13, 2011

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Language Distribution (2)

31

The next 40 languages make up ~13% of all content.

*As of June 13, 2011

The Future

Challenges Intellectual property environment

Technology and Scale

Rising journal prices, especially in Science, Technology and Medicine

Problem of preservation and future access with licensing

New Responsibilities

- Large data sets

- “Web 2.0” (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube)

Opportunities

Scholarship benefits from easy sharing

We are the information experts in the Information Age, and hard problems require expertise

If we can organize to cover costs, the sky is the limit

No matter what, Michigan will be a leader

What to Do Revise the rights environment to exploit the technology Revise individual libraries’ missions to exploit the technology

- Sharing and scale - Local layers on top - (cataloging as poster child)

Digitize wherever possible, and use digital copies wherever appropriate and legal

- Information to Artifact continuum Preserve and curate the old and the new (Display the treasures) Create Institutions to Support Collaboration

Two Futures

Thank you pnc@umich.edu