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When Google and Microsoft went into the business of adding scanned books to their indexes, many libraries were approached to participate. While a huge number of them did, there are still man that are turning down their advances. While it might seem unintuitive that organizations designed to aid in the dissemination of information would turn down a perfectly good channel do so, it does not seem quite so confusing when you realize the terms of these deals.

Open Content

For libraries like the Boston Public Library and the Smithsonian, the problem is that Google does not allow books that they scan to be shared freely with other commercial search services. While they don’t prohibit the libraries from scanning the books again at their own cost, this kind of restriction (also placed on content Microsoft scans) flies in the face of a “free web” where information is made as widely available as possible. These libraries are instead absorbing some of the costs of scanning and turning to organizations like the Open Content Alliance, which makes the material available to everyone.

The question becomes, what relationship should academia have with the web? Traditionally, academics have balked at commercializing the fruits of their labor. The idea is that knowledge should be available too as many people as it can be. The web seems like the perfect vehicle to for this kind of ideal, but unfortunately more and more of the real infrastructure is in the hands of corporations.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Whether it is setting up a classroom in a virtual world like Second Life, or having Google subsidize your book scans, academia is finding that making inroads onto the Internet requires dealing more closely with for-profits than they have ever had to before. We are now coming to the point where soon — researchers, Professors and academics of all stripes will have to weigh the opportunity of exposing their work to millions of potential users against the chance that their corporate benefactors will abuse this information for commercial gain.

The big question becomes, is it worth the risk?

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