Googlization of Libraries

William Miller, Rita Pellen

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415483797
• eBook ISBN: 9781317990055
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Information Technology
• Index: Computer Science

This book includes a variety of articles which look critically and judiciously at Google and its products, with a focus on Google Scholar and Google Book Search. It also examines their usefulness in a public service context. Its ultimate aim is to assess the use of Google as a major information resource. Its subject matter deals with online megasearch engines and their influence on reference librarianship, the impact of Google on information seeking, librarianship and the development of book digitization projects in which Google Book Search plays its part.

This book will be of interest to librarians across all educational sectors, library science scholars and publishers.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Library Administration.

Standing on the Shoulders of Libraries:
A Holistic and Rhetorical Approach to Teaching Google Scholar

Charlie Potter

The professed goals of the Google Corporation closely resemble those of most public and academic libraries. The stated goal of Google, “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” is global in scope and operates on the assumption that, indeed, the world’s information is not universally accessible and useful … or organized.¹ Of course, no library would claim that it has achieved (or ever could achieve) this lofty goal; one central reason for this is that libraries generally serve local populations (i.e., community members, students, scholars) and/or collect specific materials. In addition to organizing localized collections of information in an attempt to make them accessible and useful, librarians help people find high-quality and apt information depending on their unique search needs, assist information seekers in understanding and using this information, and hope to help people appreciate the value of information seeking with respect to lifelong learning.

Google, in contrast, offers one-stop information shopping and banks on the usability of its interface and ability to generate advertising revenue. Although slight superficial differences exist between the missions of Google and libraries, one still wonders, “Why would a corporation want to step in and do the same thing that a library does, except on a more global scale?” There are several possible answers to this question. First, Google believes (and not altogether unfairly) that it can do a better job of organizing information than librarians can. Second, perhaps, Google also feels that it can enable the creation of information by users across the globe. A third and often unmentioned reason is that Google discovered that it could capitalize on information seekers, especially those who make a career out of research.

Google Scholar, unlike many of Google’s more global services, functions in conjunction with another party; in this case, the other party is the academic library (and their local collections). As Google acknowledges, Google Scholar succeeds only because libraries have provided access to their resources via the Google Scholar interface. In addition to the aforementioned goal of organizing the world’s information, Google adds the following statement to its Google Scholar help page: “Facilitating library access to scholarly texts brings us one step closer to this goal. We’re thankful to the libraries and librarians who make it possible.”²

Indeed, libraries do make possible the success of the Google Scholar interface by enabling users to access local collections. As Jeffery Pomerantz suggests, “It is possible for libraries to add value to search technologies by providing a layer of service available to those using it.”³ Value, in this case, is evidenced through an endorsement or the employment of a particular search technology; by allowing Google Scholar to link to library resources, libraries have provided the needed “layer of service” that translates into an endorsement of Google.

It is worth noting that Google Scholar has similarly added a layer of service to libraries by allowing people to access materials through a Web-based interface. Google Scholar, at this moment in time, cannot fulfill its stated goal without the help (and financial contribution) of libraries. Thus, although librarians endorse Google and its scholarly search interface, Google claims to make library resources more accessible. Of course, Google also uses the relationship to gain recognition for the Google brand, which in turn creates revenue for the Google Corporation.

For fans of Google, these facts might raise the question, “If Google Scholar gives me what I need, why should I care if they make a little money in the deal, especially since Google Scholar does not yet contain advertisements?” I will examine the implications of this question, highlighting reasons why librarians, especially those involved in bibliographic instruction, need to examine the rhetoric behind Google Scholar and the market forces surrounding it. Using issues of advertising, privacy, and censorship as examples, I will holistically and rhetorically analyze Google Scholar, illustrating that many of the goals and actions of Google are antithetical to those most libraries would support. Further, I will examine the Google Scholar interface and suggest that treating Google technology as a neutral tool is dangerous, as the rhetoric of Google Scholar is shaping a new generation of researchers; in this case, the interface is determining the search. In addition, I will offer possible pedagogical strategies for dealing with Google Scholar in the information literacy curriculum.

LIBRARIES AND GOOGLE SCHOLAR: A MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL RELATIONSHIP?

In many cases, the relationship between libraries and Google Scholar is happily symbiotic. Google Scholar helps the library by lending its popular search technology to the cause of academic research, and libraries allow Google Scholar access to their holdings. The only thing that differs between what one would find in a library database versus what one could find on Google Scholar is, largely, the interface.⁴ However, many additional implications emerge from this union. Specifically, as mentioned above, libraries are effectively endorsing the Google Corporation. Of course, corporate endorsements happen frequently in the academic world. As early as the 1960s, critics like Richard Hofstadter began noting the relationship between the university and the corporation. In most cases, this means that a university chooses a Coca-Cola contract over a Pepsi contract or that its sports teams wear Nike rather than Adidas attire. In turn, a university reaps a financial benefit, in addition to other product-related perks.⁵

In the case of libraries and Google Scholar, the corporation provides a service that supplements (or replaces) a service performed previously by the university. Google Scholar does not charge libraries for this service; instead, the library pays in other ways, namely through their agreements with proprietary databases and their purchase of link resolver technology, which I will discuss in a later paragraph. Money does not flow between Google and libraries. Thus, by allowing Google access to their collections, libraries assume the expense of the technology and the scholarly information that make the Google interface successful. In short, the library allows Google to provide access to information for which the library has already paid through a technology that the library provides; in turn, Google also gets an opportunity to advertise for its other sources and a forum through which it can focus solely on interface rather than content.

Of course, we must not forget that Google is, at the end of the day, an advertising corporation–not a public service. This situation is not altogether beneficial for the library when Google, as previously discussed, professes a mission that assumes librarians are not doing an adequate job and need assistance from a corporation. Fears of corporate takeover coupled with fears of being viewed as outdated and obsolete put libraries in a complex ethical and economic quagmire: Do librarians pair with Google and appear to be on the cutting edge of search technology, or do they choose to continue autonomously at the risk of being viewed as an out-of-touch profession of Luddites?

To answer this question, librarians must analyze the value of the Google relationship from the perspective of the user. The best librarians are keenly aware of information equity issues, and a stated goal of the profession is to assuage these concerns. In fact, access and information equity are listed as “core values” of the library profession.⁶ As librarians know, one major obstacle to access and equity is the cost of the equipment and interfaces that provide access to that information. Thus, it is a professional ethical imperative that good librarians will offer the best information solutions to people, even if those solutions can be obtained without direct use of the proprietary resources of the library. In other words, if Google is seemingly cost-free and provides easy-to-access information (sometimes the same information a person could find in a library, especially in the case of Google Scholar) through an interface users prefer, then librarians must use/teach/recommend Google.

However, good librarians must also ask what factors make something the “best” information source. In addition to the traditional evaluative factors used to determine the quality of an information source, information economics must be considered. Corporations like Google have a significant stake in whether or not resources like Google Scholar will be viewed as viable information resources for academic researchers. When academic libraries add value to Google Scholar by allowing an advertising corporation to dictate the medium through which people find information, they must also ask, to reference Marshall McLuhan, what message is being conveyed through the search medium. For this reason, a holistic rhetorical evaluation–a thorough critique and examination of the linguistic, social, cultural, economic, technological, and political aspects of an entity itself as well as the forces that govern it–can help libraries decide if the values of libraries and their people mesh with the values of the Google corporation.

Samuel Green suggested over 100 years ago that, “A librarian should be as unwilling to allow an inquirer to leave the library with his question unanswered as a shop-keeper is to have a customer go out of his store without making a purchase.”⁷ Unfortunately, this metaphor is more dangerous than ever; in fact, when one considers Google Scholar, the relationship between “inquirer” and “customer” seems to suggest that the entities are identical or interchangeable rather than metaphorical. An information seeker and a customer looking to make a purchase are not the same; further, a shop-keeper might want to, for personal benefit, sell something to a customer that he/she does not really want or need in order to make a profit. Although Google Scholar is, on the surface, seemingly free to users, it actually resembles the store in the above metaphor, rather than the library. In this case, what appears to be “free” does not always actually promote equity or access. Nor is it truly free.

THE RHETORIC OF GOOGLE SCHOLAR AND THE GOOGLE ENDORSEMENT IMPLICATIONS

The Internet is not neutral or without cost, and neither are the technologies that make it possible. Instead, it is shaped by largely corporate and capitalist forces. As Laura Gurak writes:

The efficiency of the Internet is great, and the ability to reach out to others and tap into vast sources of information and ideas … is profound. Yet more and more of the Internet is being used to make money, gather our personal information, protect corporate intellectual property, and encourage us to shop…. How we view the world and how we live in it are being shaped by the features of these new technologies.⁸

Google promotes all of the activities Gurak mentions: making money, gathering information, protecting the corporation over the user, and encouraging consumption through advertising. This is the major way in which the true mission of Google differs from that of most libraries in America.⁹ In other words, both entities profess information access and organization as their goals; however, we must ask, “To what end?” For libraries, the answer varies but usually involves fostering an environment where a more intelligent and informed public can grow. Conversely, the answer for Google is making money for itself and its advertisers–seamlessly. We should also not be fooled into thinking that the technology used by Google (or any search technology, really) is a neutral force in the information seeking process. Cynthia Selfe and Gail Hawisher intelligently caution against this type of assumption by pointing out that computers are not simply innocent tools that we use to manipulate or create information; instead, computers and the interfaces they present both shape us and use us to create information.

Data mining, a practice which Google uses to create advertising profiles, is a good example of this phenomenon. A user searches for a product using a particular strategy. He/she finds the product and moves on to another task. All the while, computers and corporations take this data and use them to assemble descriptions of how people search and for what they are searching. Then, a corporation like Google can “combine personal information collected from you with information from other Google services or third parties to provide a better user experience, including customizing content for you.”¹⁰ Thus, while a person thinks he/she is just doing a basic Google search, he/she is also allowing Google to use information (in conjunction with information from third parties that are likely to also use data mining) from that search to create his/her experience. In other words, an information seeker tells the computer to search for something (i.e., the user is the agent) but the search paradigm has been predetermined. Of course, Google claims to do this for the benefit of information users; however, in reality, the user experience is only important insofar as it supports Google’s larger goal: generati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction: Living with Google
• 1. Standing on the Shoulders of Libraries: A Holistic and Rhetorical Approach to Teaching Google Scholar
• 2. Fool’s Gold: Why the Internet Is No Substitute for a Library
• 3. Who Holds the Keys to the Web for Libraries?
• 4. An Opportunity, Not a Crisis: How Google Is Changing the Individual and the Information Profession
• 5. Studying Journal Coverage in Google Scholar
• 6. Changes at Google Scholar: A Conversation with Anurag Acharya
• 7. Attitudes of OhioLINK Librarians Toward Google Scholar
• 8. Using Google Scholar at the Reference Desk
• 9. Google Book Search Libraries and Their Digital Copies
• 10. To Google or Not to Google, That Is the Question: Supplementing Google Book Search to Make It More Useful for Scholarship
• 11. The Million Book Project in Relation to Google
• 12. Using Metadata to Discover the Buried Treasure in Google Book Search
• 13. Google Video–Just Another Video Sharing Site?
• 14. Google’s Bid to Build Cooperation and Partnerships Through Librarian Central and Google for Educators
• Index