Anonymous Patron writes “U of M News Service has posted U-M statement on Google library project from James Hilton, University of Michigan associate provost and interim librarian, regarding the lawsuit against the Google library project. “This is a tremendously important public policy discussion. In the future, most research and learning is going to take place in a digital world. Material that does not exist in digital form will effectively disappear. We need to decide whether we are going to allow the development of new technology to be used as a tool to restrict the public’s access to knowledge, or if we are going to ensure that people can find these works and that they will be preserved for future generations.””
Johnny Chis also points us to Boing Boing for some praise, and an editorial from Wired as well.
technology as a tool to be selective in saving
library material. Everything in this world is not about the development of technology. What a sad world if we allow every piece of library material to be saved or not as digital. What happened to our history of the written word? This is more important to me than the current, overblown use of computers. They serve a lot of good functions, but look how many people have been put out of work due to the demand for more routinization of the computer. What’s is wrong in doing some things manually. Isn’t using technology to select the imagery, the select written material that we want people to see a form of thought manipulation.
Call me old-fashioned or out of touch, but what happened to a much slower time? Are we to become completely stressed human beings with no appreciation of what has gone before? Greg