Technological Tomes

Universities tend to be the fountainhead of revolutions. How surprising then to find such little uproar at the news of massive corporate management of the digitization of books in the Widener Library system.

It is a tribute to Google’s soft-power in the liberal academic community—rare, if non-existent among most corporations—that they have the permission and goodwill to make the library collections of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan available to academic cmomunities around the world. (As well as making, to a smaller but still significant extent, the Oxford and the New York Public Library available.) Already much trumpeted for speeding up global information access, the process of globalization would take a leap forward with this initiative, which involves the scanning and uploading of materials to a vast cyber-library. It would give universities around the world a much-increased access to information and knowledge.

The Widener Library system—the largest university library system in the world—is notably difficult to access for those outside the Harvard community. This makes it an excellent choice for digitization since it will lead to a dramatic increase in ease of access at low risk to the books themselves. Librarians are for the most part understandably overjoyed.

Publishers are, however, divided. Fearing piracy, some cite the scale, ease, and impunity at which copyrighted music and movies have been transacted across the Internet. Google, for its part, has set the following rule for the digitization process: publishers can tell it which books not to scan at all, similar to how web site owners can be left out of search engine indexes.

There are other reasons to suggest that publisher concerns are misplaced. For one thing, the spread of digitized books will not be comparable to digital films or music. While it is ideal to listen or watch the latter from a computer, the same cannot be said for texts. Reading on an illuminated screen is uncomfortable, hard on the eyes, and cannot be done pleasurably for long periods of time.

For another, one would not be able to read whole texts of materials not in the public domain. No more than 20 percent of such a book can be viewed, even after multiple searches. It is our opinion that making such snippets available will not only massively facilitate research but may perhaps even compel readers to purchase a physical copy.

It is also a helpful reminder that the materials in question here are academic texts and not items normally mass-consumed. That is, it’s not so much Harry Potter as it is Howard Gardner being disseminated.

As long as such copyright restrictions can be maintained, there is no reason not to see digitization as fair use under U.S. copyright law, which permits everything from personal use copying to parodies to excerpts in book reviews. We see copyright laws not as a means to keep information away, but one to disseminate it justly, keeping in mind the labor of the producers. We know of no better way of pleasing deceased thinkers than by having their hard-earned ideas and research be available to dramatically larger groups of people.

Nineteen European countries, fearing the linguistic hegemony of the English language, have initiated their own library digitization project. Though the fear is misguided—after English, digitization’s next frontier would inevitably be other languages—the action is not. If the European libraries can manage such endeavors successfully—and we see no reason why they will not—the world will be all-the-richer for it.

But one logical offshoot of this initiative must be kept in mind. As access to academic literature is made easier, it is likely that American universities—and by deduction American industries—will no longer enjoy an obvious advantage of access when compared to other countries. As local students in many developing countries are granted access, physically studying in America, while still advantageous, becomes less so. In this situation, it is also more likely that underprivileged academicians—hitherto without access to Western libraries— will produce more world-class research.

This is not an unfavorable scenario by any means and so fear is not an appropriate or productive response. An influx in the transaction of ideas between both hemispheres of the world will be greatly advantageous to both sides in the long run; it is also inevitable.

However, it is imperative that we balance this change by increasing dwindling numbers of American students in scientific and technological fields as well as providing international students—whose numbers have been dwindling greatly since 2001 both due to visa problems and increased opportunities at home—with more incentives to research in America. If not, America risks losing the technological advantage that has propelled her economic growth thus far, and this far.

Meanwhile, on a purely self-interested note, we look forward to being able to research papers from the comfort of our desks and beds. Who knew Google would end up churning out luxury products?