Reading in Cyberspace

Journal #4

In general, Google's online library project will have a huge impact. It'll impact the consumers who buy these books, because they're able to read a preview of the book and be able to be linked directly to an online store who sells it. It would be extremely convenient for people who are looking for a type of book but don't know what exactly they're looking for, as the project includes a search engine that looks through its growing database of book entries. The biggest impacts the project will have are on the people publishing these books. With Google's library project, people will be able to learn about these publishers' books and possible buy them. Google's library project is basically a way for these publishers to advertise their books- and effectively too because of Google's massive popularity. In the corporate world, everyone will win: publishers could invest a little bit of funding towards getting their books in Google's online library while Google makes a little more money and adds more popularity and versatility to its empire.

To my knowledge, Google's competitors have been completely blindsided by the library project. I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar come from then sooner or later. Keep in mind that Google was once just a simple search engine. By adding the library project to their empire, they're staying true to their roots and are taking one step closer to becoming the ultimate archive of information.

The reason why I personally prefer just to get information off the internet is because of how simple it is to access it, whereas looking for and through books and magazines is a little more tedious and is a longer process. Google's online library is a great tool for looking up books because it's simple, it's already got a vast database, and you can even preview books before you actually check them out. The faster access we have to information and the more information we can access, the better.

I think that librarians will praise and embrace this technology because it can potentially expand their libraries to the whole world. It would be so convenient if google could actually integrate itself with the databases of libraries because libraries have very important historical archives. Could google's library project be a potential threat to librarians? Possibly, but it all depends on how it develops. I personally think that it's neat, but not as useful as one would think- maybe not right now, actually. Since it's a new addition to Google's empire, there are still a lot of improvements to be made.

It's useful, nonetheless, and it has potential.