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Karen Coyle writes: > > How is this different from what's already in place in terms of > > electronic resources? This is not uniquely Google, nor has it > > even been proven to happen. > > Uh, can you say "Elsevier"? Elsevier raised journal prices by more > than 10% a year for many years, journals that academic institutions > felt that had to have because they were the leading journals in the > field. Library budgets became severely strained, and purchasing > power dropped dramatically. This has led to something of a > rebellion, but not before the damage was done. Very true ... but the situation with Google is potentially much worse, because Elsevier is increasingly being bypassed by academics who want their work to be widely read: I know that plenty of people in my own field (palaeontology) have stopped or at least greatly decreased their submissions to Elsevier-owned journals. In the case of academic journals, the content providers (i.e. authors) are free to take their work elsewhere, and are doing just that [so sell your shares in Elsevier]. But there is a finite pool of orphan works which, if Google really does have exclusive right to them, can be monopolised indefinitely. _/|_ ___________________________________________________________________ /o ) \/ Mike Taylor <[log in to unmask]> http://www.miketaylor.org.uk )_v__/\ Orthogonality uber alles!