RR-NYC salon: Google Books Settlement

Friday October 16 2009
8-9:30pm
Sixth Street Community Center
638 East Sixth Street (between Avenues B & C)
Free, but attendees will be asked to donate a few bucks to help pay for the space rental

The NYC collective of Radical Reference will host a "people's university" style salon to discuss the Google Books Settlement.

Participants will be strongly encouraged to sign up to read one of the articles posted below, and be prepared to report on it at the meeting. See the bibliography from the OCLC salon discussion we held in January for an example of how this works.

1. Please add items you think people should read ahead of time.
2. Please keep them in anti-chronological order.
3. Feel free, encouraged even, to provide some annotation.
4. Please volunteer to summarize one item for the group at the salon by putting your name after it in parentheses, like this: (Farfel)
5. If you can't/don't want to edit the page to add a citation or claim an article, just say what you want in a comment.

Bibliography

• Author. "Article title [linked]." Source. Date. (name)
  Annotation. e.g. The crux of this article is... or Note that the author is...
   
• Poulsen, Kevin. "Google’s Abandoned Library of 700 Million Titles" Wired. October 7, 2009. (Amanda)
  Follow up: "Google Begins Fixing Usenet Archive" Wired. October 8, 2009. (Jill C.)

   

• Goodman, Amy. "Google's 'Orphan Works'." Powell's Books blog. October 3, 2009. (Jenna)
   
• Goodman, Amy. "Scanning the Horizon of Books and Libraries." Truthdig. September 29, 2009. (Amanda)
   
• Samuelson, Pamela. "Google Book Settlement 1.0 Is History." Huffington Post. September 24, 2009.
   
• Albanese, Andrew. "DoJ Says Google Settlement Must Be Changed." Publishers Weekly. 9/18/2009 (Laura)
   
• US District Court, Southern District, New York. "Statement of Interest of the United States of America Regarding Proposed Class Settlement." GPO, I guess? 9/18/2009.
   
• Flagg, Gordon. "Copyright Head Tells House She Opposes Google Books Settlement." American Libraries Online. September 16, 2009.(Amanda)
   
• Talk of the Nation. "Who Should Control the Virtual Library?" National Public Radio. September 15, 2009
  30 minute radio show: "Google stands to be the single repository for millions of the world's books. Advocates applaud the organization and the access a digital library can afford. But critics worry about monopoly and profit motives, and what it means for readers' privacy."

   

• Hickman, Amanda B. "Free as in Google." Velo, Rapido. September 10, 2009 at 5:12 pm.
   
• Albanese, Andrew. "U.S. Register of Copyrights Slams Google Book Search Settlement." Publishers Weekly. 9/10/2009, 9:40am. (Laura)
   
• Oder, Norman and Josh Hadro. "Academics, ProQuest, Networks Object to Google Settlement." Library Journal. 9/10/2009.
   
• Oder, Norman. "At Congressional Hearing, Register of Copyrights Slams Google Settlement." Library Journal. 9/10/2009. (Natalie B.)
   
• Waller, Vivienne. "The Relationship between Public Libraries and Google: Too Much Information." First Monday. 7 September 2009. (Melissa)
   
• "Google's big book case: The internet giant’s plan to create a vast digital library should be given a green light." The Economist. Sep 3rd 2009
  This article comes down on Google's side. It also gives a European perspective.
   
• Oder, Norman. "Google, 'The Last Library,' and Millions of Metadata Mistakes." Library Journal. 9/3/2009 (Alycia)
   
• Liedtke, Michael. "As Google Books battle draws on, Amazon makes its case." Associated Press, seen in
  The Christian Science Monitor. September 3, 2009 (Alycia)
   
• Nunberg, Geoffrey. "Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars." The Chronicle Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education. August 31, 2009.
   
• Helft, Miguel. "Group Lays Out Arguments Against Google Books Deal." New York Times Bits Blog. August 26, 2009
   
• Margolis, Bernie. Open Letter to ALA, ACRL, ARL. Librarian blog. 8.25. 2009
   
• Helft, Miguel. "Google Rivals Will Oppose Book Settlement." The New York Times. August 20, 2009.
   
• Albanese, Andrew Richard. "Deal or No Deal: What if the Google Settlement Fails?" Publishers Weekly. 5/25/2009
   
• Milliot, Jim. "Internet Archive Latest to Object to Google Settlement." Publishers Weekly. 4/17/2009.(John B - IA project as alternative/contrasting example)
   
• Grimmelmann, James. "How to Fix the Google Book Search Settlement." Journal of Internet Law, v. 12, no. 10. April 2009.
   
• Cohn, Cindy. "Google Should Use Extra Time to Add Privacy into Google Book Search" Electronic Frontier Foundation Deeplinks Blog. October 6, 2009.
    (Eric)
• Butler, Brandon. "The Google Books Settlement: Who Is Filing And What Are They Saying? ALA, ACRL and ARL Statement. September 28, 2009.

There's also a good bibliography on the Open Book Alliance site and another one from Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
 

Also of interest, an interview with Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin. They mention the settlement, evilness.
 

Maybe this doesn't belong in the general bibliography, so I'll put it here: Harvard professor Robert Darnton's "Google & the Future of Books," published in the New York Review of Books on February 12, 2009.

Guiding Questions

1. Into which category does your article fit--background, pro-settlement, anti-settlement, neutral, primary source?
    
2. Does your article reflect or inspire a radical perspective on the topic?
    
3. Does your article make any implications about libraries or librarianship vis a vis the settlement?
    
4. ???
    

Notes from the salon are here.