Millions more newspapers pages to be available on Google
Today Google announced that they are launching:
“an initiative to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives.”
This adds to the large amount of existing online newspaper content, by publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, that is already being crawled by Google.
In addition, Google has entered a partnership with ProQuest and Heritage that will allow even more newspapers pages to be digitised and made available online. As the ProQuest press-release explains:
“ProQuest will contribute content to the partnership, and will introduce newspaper publishers nationwide to the program. ProQuest will also supply from its microfilm vault newspaper content that can be delivered effectively in the less formal framework of the open web.”
Newspapers content will be available through Google News Archive Search:
“Search results include content from a number of sources, including both partner content digitized by Google through our News Archive Partner Program and online archival materials that we’ve crawled. Search results can include content that is freely accessible as well as content that requires a fee. Articles related to a single story within a given time period are grouped together to allow users to see a broad perspective on the topics they are searching. “
Librarians on the way out?
The JISC and BL-commissioned Google Generation report highlights a number of key points that will have an effect on current and future digitisation projects.
- That librarians need to radically re-think their position and tasks to avoid becoming outdated in the face of tools like Google.
- It is not just the ‘kids of today’ that dumb down in front of a computer terminal - we all skim over the surface of the web’s voluminous content
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The now-ingrained hyperactive approach to skimming Internet content means that any kind of barrier to access (payment or passwords for instance) means sacrificing the attention of many potential users
It’s worth reading.
Podcast: Why is Google showing us the way forward in digitisation? asks senior UK librarian
The recent LIBER-EBLIDA workshop on digitisation of library material in Europe explored some important challenges facing national and university libraries across the continent as they attempt to join together to deliver a “European Digital Library”.
In this podcast interview Paul Ayris, librarian at University College London and a senior figure in these European developments, depicts a fragmented European digitisation landscape and calls for more strategic pan-European vision and leadership. He asks a number of challenging questions of the library community, including how the role of libraries has to be re-thought not just as custodians of collections but also as learning and social spaces.
Ayris points out how Google has changed the way people think of, access and use resources, and libraries can learn from more direct and innovative models of introducing change.
In the UK, JISC is providing an infrastructure and leadership in funding digitisation projects and encouraging collaborations.
A look through the currently funded JISC digitisation projects will reveal how these collections differ from the type of digitisation Google is doing, by focusing on special collections with a variety of different formats and types of material, spanning centuries, and with a high degree of curatorial input.
The importance of media literacy
Members of the JISC Digitisation Programme attended the Educa Online e-learning conference in Berlin at the end of November 2007.
Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture, was one of the key speakers at the conference. He made an impassioned attack on what he saw as the anarchic, non-professional nature of Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, My Space and other Web2.0 services.
To Keen, relying on computer algorithms or permitting any users instant ability to upload content was destroying years of accumulated wisdom garnered through peer-review, editorial control and authorial responsibility.
Many of the Keen’s statements were rather polemical, and suggested throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
However, discussion of the issues at the conference reinforced the idea that the important thing is not to try and ignore such Web2.0 services but put media literacy at the top of the Internet and e-learning agenda. This way users will be able to distinguish a trusted website from a second-rate one, and better manipulate services such as Google and Wikipedia.
A further point to consider was that this issues should not just revolve around information technology literacy but a broader media literacy. Knowledge arrives from many different media - newspapers, television as well as the Internet and plenty others – and so to gain a proper understanding of knowledge, these media need to be considered together rather than separately.
