Reading In Cyberspace

Journal Entry # 5


Google’s Book Library Project enables you to search for books that our in Google’s collection. It would show the user the information about the book. Some would display a few sentences which would help the viewers identify the book. People would be able to view the whole content of the book, but only if it is out of copyright. Although people benefit from this library-based digitization, the invention of Google Book Search impacts Google's relationships with different publishers. Publishers would think unfairly of this creation and would beleive that this should be considered illegal because Google is providing a free access to their books. This would also affect the sales of the books and the profit earned by the publishers. People would depend and rely on using Google Book Search to find and read the books online, giving them a reason not to spend money on actually buying the book. As a result, the sales of the books in the stores would decrease, causing the publishers and the writers to not earn as much.Other engines like Yahoo!, and Microsoft have been been competing with Google, in terms of industry growth. Because of the creation of Google Book Search, Google's profit has grown. This will affect on how other companies respond to it. Alll companies want their industry and profits to grow. So because of Google Book Search, they may be thinking of other ideas relating to programs like Google Book Search to also increase their profits. So in the future, they may be a possibility of several programs from other companies simlar to Google's that would be available for people around the world to use.This project would greatly impact and increase the access that people have on information. Now, they would have the ability to research books online, instead of going to a library and looking for the book themselves. In situations where people are not able to visit the library to find the book, they would just use Google Book Search to find the book. Google Book Search also has one advantage people would benefit on. People would have the ability on searching books that would be hard to find in libraries. Books from the past that were publishsed over a period ago, would be difficult to find at a local library. In Google Book Search, there is a better possibilty of find the source of that book.
I do not think that librarians would be affected by the creation of Google Book Search, because people would still visit libraries even for the books that are displayed on Google. The reason why is because some of the books with copyright agreements will only show several lines on the site. People who would need further research on that particular book will have to access libraries and get the book for more information.
Personally, i think that the creation of this source is a good idea, but i would not really benefit from it. When i use books for refrence and to research information, i would like to obatin more than three lines worth of information. I also would not like wasting time searching up a book that would only give me a result of a couple lines from that book. Although Google Book Search is a useful and beneficial program, i would rather get information on books by getting it from the libraries.