Via New York Times: Google Hopes to Open a Trove of Little-Seen Books:
"Some scholars worry that Google users are more likely to search for narrow information than to read at length. “I have to say that I think pedagogically and in terms of the advancement of scholarship, I have a concern that people will be encouraged to use books in this very fragmentary way,” said Alice Prochaska, university librarian at Yale.
Others said they thought readers would continue to appreciate long texts and that Google’s book search would simply help readers find them.
“There is no short way to appreciate Jane Austen, and I hope I’m right about that,” said Paul Courant, university librarian at the University of Michigan. “But a lot of reading is going to happen on screens. One of the important things about this settlement is that it brings the literature of the 20th century back into a form that the students of the 21st century will be able to find it.”
Google’s book search has already entered the popular culture, in the film version of “Twilight,” based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer about a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire. Bella, one of the main characters, uses Google to find information about a local American Indian tribe. When the search leads her to a book, what does she do?
She goes to a bookstore and buys it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/technology/internet/05google.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=google&st=cse
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