Comments on: Internet Librarian: Google-brary and Tomorrow’s Megalibrary

By: See Also

See Also — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 03:45:51 +0000

Meme 2.0

I was in the virtual peanut gallery at this morning’s SirsiDynix Institute Conversation: “The 2.0 Meme – Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Librarian 2.0.” The panel was the Library 2.0 Gang of Four, i.e., Stephen Abram, John Blyberg, Michael Casey, and…

By: See Also

See Also — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 04:06:46 +0000

Goodbye Internet Librarian 2005

Home safe and sound to my lovely family. Here are some random thoughts to clear out of my head before going to bed, though I expect I’ll have a little more to say about the conference in days to come….

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 13:35:35 +0000

Jenny, thanks very much for adding some context. I confess that I don’t know much about Google’s China policy issue, so it struck me as a bit out of left field (the other folks yelling in the audience didn’t help).

I certainly agree that we need to hold Google responsible for their actions and demand transparency; I am more skeptical of the “kumbaya scenario” than I might have sounded up above. At the same time, it doesn’t surprise me that Adam couldn’t/didn’t want to answer the question. Maybe a Google policy session would be a good one for a conference like this one, where Google could send someone more prepared to describe and defend their policies on issues like this.

By: Jenny Levine

Jenny Levine — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 13:14:11 +0000

Hi, Steve — I think your description of the China policy issue is a bit misleading, but then I’m biased because I said it. It wasn’t a peanut in the gallery yelling out a social agenda, and it certainly wasn’t on my mind when the session started. However, Adam kept pitching this rosy, cheery, kumbaya vision (to paraphrase Roy), and his answer to the single source and digital divide issues was “we’ll do the right thing.” My response was, “Hey, you’re censoring in China, so how can you be so glib and guarantee that you’ll do the right thing? Could that happen here?” And I definitely was unsatisfied with his answer, which was basically, “Not my job, next question.” If you’re going to make grandiose claims about “doing the right thing” in the future, then I think you have to be willing to field questions about your current behaviors. And this is coming from someone who likes Google and most definitely did not boo when Adam was announced. I just think it’s a fair question to ask as a response to Adam’s statements.