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> Actually, one of the big concerns about Google having exclusive rights to > the digitization of out-of-print works is the price that they will charge. One of the things I've found interesting about this discussion is the presumption of the value in these materials. Just as selection and presentation are the what distinguish a museum from a landfill -- both are essentially collections of old junk -- the value that libraries contribute is in how they select and present relevant information. Mass digitization of orphaned and out of copyright works may prove to have little value. People find ways to exert ownership over stuff that's actually worth having, and good ideas have a way of working their way through the information fabric. I'll bet money that lots of the stuff that Google has digitized either has or should have been weeded by many libraries even if there are a few gems in the mix. We may as well presume that all the web pages created in the mid 90's are highly valuable and deserving of meticulous curation. Polluting search results with junk hides the good stuff and is ultimately a disservice. On the NGC4LIB list today, a link to a study that questioned the long tail phenomenon appeared http://www.prsformusic.com/monline/research/Documents/The%20long%20tail%20of%20P2P%20v9.pdf It raises legitimate questions as to whether making more information available is necessarily a good thing I don't know if music downloading behavior is analogous to the information services that libraries provide, but the article is still worth a read. Among other things the authors find that in P2P networks, the tail might be long, but only a tiny percentage of resources see much use in practice. Now that we're all into feedback from users, it appears that the popular stuff gets even more popular while the other stuff doesn't get noticed or used just like anything that appears on page 113 of your google search results. Maybe Google will convert guano into gold, maybe it won't. But if the concern is over monopolistic behavior, privacy, money, and whatnot, it should be over the vast majority of information resources that people actually use. A bunch of old books can't be more than a tiny cut of the action. kyle -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Kyle Banerjee Digital Services Program Manager Orbis Cascade Alliance [log in to unmask] / 503.999.9787