Book Reviewed: Along Came Google: A History of Library Digitization by Deanna Marcum and Roger C. Schonfeld

Illusions of book digitization This book focuses on the history of a universal digital library, and specifically focus on the entry of Google into the library arena with promise of making global books available online. Several leading academic institutions and public libraries eagerly joined this effort to accelerate the digital activity. They embraced the concept of a universal library and began advocating for change to disseminate the information, literacy, information access, policy awareness, digital preservation, collaboration, information access and control. On December 14, 2004, Google stunned the library, technology, and copyright worlds announcing that it would start scanning millions of books from leading research libraries to create a comprehensive database of books that would be available online. But this plan did not protect authors, which precluded them from earning a return on their investments of time, efforts, and knowledge which were essential to free flow of ideas. Google’s goal was to create an unrivaled digital library that would draw users to its website, strengthen its dominance of search-engine market, expand the client niche, and increase its advertising revenue. The libraries also wanted to digitize their collections but could not do themselves because of possible copyright violations and financial resources. Google had scanned about 20 million books, and it displayed snippets - short passages in Google online searches. It gave digital copies to libraries for their own use, in payment for their cooperation for loaning their books for digitization. The Authors Guild acted against Google Books, in the Second Circuit Court of New York, the court ruled in an unprecedented expansion of the “Fair Use” doctrine that Google’s copying and providing access to some four million copyrighted books for profit-making purposes was a “Fair Use.” The court was blinded by Google’s “public benefit” arguments, calling scanning a copyrighted book is a “Fair Use.” On April 18, 2016, the Supreme Court declined to review that decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the landmark copyright infringement lawsuit, Authors Guild v. Google. The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case leaves in place the “Fair Use” doctrine and let Google have its way. Google with unlimited engineering and financial resources supported their aspirations and digitization went unhinged. But the digital transformation has led to tensions between global and domestic issues. Universal access and tech-controlled filter bubble, between freedom and control, between openness and truth, information and disinformation have made their way in an unprecedented way. Recently, Google threatened to demonetize publishers using its advertisement network if the publishers’ dissent from regime change idea for Russia. Similar threats were made by Google against publishers who accurately reported on BLM – ANTIFA riots across the country. In his book, “The Tyranny of Big Tech.” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri has described the ways Google and Big Tech giants have been using heavy-handedness in pushing their own liberal and progressive ideas through their platforms. Shadow banning conservative ideas in Wikipedia and Google searches have become well-known in recent years. The authors of this book lack focus in narrating the history of book digitization, one chapter does not flow well into the next chapter. Chapters are open-ended with no conclusions. In chapter 7, the authors examine the role of Hathi Trust as an alternative to a universal library. It is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books. But the financial resources and the possible cooperation with other large libraries is unsure. And the fact that it still depends on Google Books for digitized content makes it less of an alternative for Google Books.