I don't see what's harmful about letting users examine Google metadata
about a book before deciding whether to get it off the shelves.  There
is a non-trivial amount of time involved in going to the library and
finding the book in the stacks.(And maybe if you want it you in fact
need to 'recall' it and wait a few days for it to come back, or ILL it).
For a large research project, there are lots of books you might
potentially be interested in. The more our catalog tells you about the
book to help aid the user in deciding if the book is of interest to
them---the better.  Is this not one of the functions of the catalog,
even one defined in the age-old IFLA principles/objectives? To aid the
user  "to *select *a bibliographic resource that is appropriate to the
user’s needs".

Is this not in fact one of the functions of, for instance, oh, the
LibraryThing  catalog enhancements?

I'd like to give the user as much  "evaluative" information to aid in
their selection as possible. Google is just as good a source of this as
anything else.  It is important to allow the user to easily distinguish
extra evaluative information from electronic (or other) access routes,
and to keep the extra evaluative information from overwhelming the user
or making the interface more confusing. This is a question of interface
design.

I don't understand Tim's opposition.

Jonathan

Tim Spalding wrote:
>> The general consensus around here seems to be even the minimal
>>
> records tend to have useful information, more so than if Google was
> just repeating the catalog entry.
>
> What bothers me here is that this isn't a "good enough" situation.
> This isn't so-so information in an information poor environment. The
> library has the book in all its glory, right there on the shelf ready
> for the deepest, truest engagement.
>
> As a former educator (okay, a TA, but I cared!), I believe that
> learning often requires some effort—not involves but requires.
> Engaging with something you don't know or understand is hard. Giving
> students tools is good. But if you give them a tool simultaneously
> super-easy and deeply deficient, too many will choose it over harder,
> better tools. (Of course, getting a book off a shelf didn't *used* to
> seem like hard work.) At some point, schools and libraries should
> promote tools that are "good for you" over ones that aren't.
>
> I don't want to overdo this. I built LibraryThing. I'm the farthest
> thing from anti-web. But I balk at pushing empty Google Book Search
> pages on students who could get off their rear ends and hold the book
> in their hands two minutes later.
>
> Tim
>
>

--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu