Death of Microsoft Live: Don’t be so quick to rejoice, Brewster
Brewster Kahle at the Internet Archive rejoices that Microsoft is killing Live Book Search and the related book digitization activities. I’m of mixed mind here.
On one hand, I myself would hate to see literature and knowledge so dependent on the goodwill of individual corporations. Under the TeleRead proposal, nations would have a decentralized digital library systems. Corporations could help build and run national repositories, but they would be mere contractors, overseen by librarians. I still believe in the TeleRead vision, but nirvana isn’t here yet. Microsoft, with its backing of the Open Content Alliance, helped balance out the influence of an OCA rival, Google. Perhaps Brewster could check out another perspective, Microsoft hands Google the future of digital books, in the Register. Although the Reg in character overstates its case, that opinion isn’t entirely off target. Point is, noncommerical uses will help spur commercial ones and vice versa. I don’t want e-books stuck in a nonprofit or government ghetto.
Meanwhile I’d ask Brewster just where the money is going to come from for mass and comprehensive digitization, especially of public domain works. Librarydom has an above-average helping of Luddites. As for large foundations, so far they seems less interested in digitalization projects than in flashy areas such as virtual reality. While Brewster is a multimillionaire many times over, even his resources have limits. TeleRead, anyone, with the Archive among the main contractors? At the same time I’d argue for a vigorous for-profit sector—bookstores included—to assure a broad range of content and freedom of expression.
Addendum, 3:07 p.m.: It’s clear that Brewster is very grateful for the help Microsoft provided, as Bibliofuture says. But note his sentiments as summed up in Ars Technica suggest more than that, for the long run: "In a way, Kahle sees the retreat of the corporations from OCA as a necessary step, perhaps even a good one. He’s a firm believer in the idea that corporations should not be the entities we trust to provide access to important cultural data stores. If people think that corporations are the right way to access the history of human discourse, Kahle says they’re in for ‘a series of very rude shocks.’ (The University of Michiagn, which has thrown in its lot with Google, does not agree.)"
Image credit: CC-licensed photo from future15pic.
Related: Library books you can KEEP forever—and other ideas to help public libraries survive the digital era and How OLPC laptops could give commercial e-publishers an iPod moment—and not just in developing countries.
June 8th, 2008 at 5:07 am
I’m surprised that Kahle would object to Microsoft Live Books because they were handing over copies of the scans to the Internet Archive! They also did a much better job than Google of dealing with public domain material.