NYT has a pretty good article about Google's initiative to digitize, and make searchable, holdings in academic libraries. A few selective points are commented below...
1. Would Google users eventually forgo the experience of holding a book, actually seeing a historical document, the serendipity of slow research?
You wanna talk serendipity? That is the heart and soul of web-based research, where it is SOOO easy to indulge passing intellectual curiousity. In contrast to the dead-tree experience, where, as you are perusing a magazine article to decide if it is even worth photocopying, you might read something of interest, unrelated to your objective. How likely is it that your curiousity will provide sufficient motivation to send you schlepping back to the stacks to look up that additional item?
For academics, maybe it will happen, since that tangent might be the subject of the next article or research project, and they aren't operating under a real tight deadline (no sarcasm, statement of general fact). For regular people--nil.
2. "A scanned image will only tell you some things...I recall the story of a gentleman being in a library and watching a researcher sniff books...It turned out that the aroma of vinegar was still embedded in those that had been treated with vinegar to prevent cholera during an epidemic."
Okay, that is a great anecdote, but it sounds to me like the exception that proves the rule.
3. Some interviewed were concerned that Google could not fully reproduce material that was still under copyright protection, which means all books published in the United States after 1923. "
Maybe, just maybe, this initiative be part of an impetus (does an impetus have parts?) to restoring sanity to the length of copyright.
4. Many university leaders realize that for most people, information does not exist unless it is online.
Amen.
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I remember, when I was getting my MBA in the early 90s, I discovered AB-Online (I think that was the name). It was a business library CD-ROM package that had full-text available, on stacks and stacks of CD-ROMs. So, first you would do your search (I don't think any of it was on-line), and you would get abstracts of your results. If you wanted the whole thing, then you were instructed as to which disc (out of dozens), to load.
It also seems like printing as an add-on service. Some libraries had it, some didn't. So, you might be looking at an article in all its glorius (imaged) full-text, but you had to read it on-line (a problem, since there was high demand and a strict time limit) and copy down the useful bits, or use the on-line as a triage to decide whether it was indeed worth seeking the dead-copy, photocopy-able version.
Btw, this idea of having access to stacks of info-packed CD-ROMs was Bill Gates original vision for "information at your fingertips"--the phrase he introduced at a (I think) Comdex keynote c. 1992.
11:04:09 PM 
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