Librarian's Unite Against Google

Yesterday, TIME Magazine reported that the Justice Department will be looking closer into Google's plans to publish 20% of some titles online at no charge and reaping in a portion of the profit when/if the work is bought via their online service.

That part is not too bad, but what has most librarians' buns in a wad are the snippets of "orphan books" (out of print books who's author's and publishers are unknown) that will be published and then sold, where Google will reap ALL of the profits.

In my opinion, the market will dictate if people will go for these unpublished pieces of work. They have very little credit in the academic world if they are ever used for reference due to the fact that the author and publisher are unknown.

I say that if Google wants to publish them, go for it. In one respect it brings writing to a broader clientele which it would have not had reached otherwise.