Lessons of the Google Book Search: What Is Next?

Abstract

The article examines future prospects of the Google Book Project and its place in the development of the information society infrastructure. The article gives an overall assessment of the project Google Book Search in the context of digital revolution and changes in the institutional paradigm of modern libraries. Google Inc. formed a huge electronic library, establishing the right of access to it on the corporation’s own terms. Thus, the giant of IT-industry made a request for reformatting the paradigm of production and dissemination of knowledge. As a result, libraries, as social and cultural institutions, had to compete with the dynamic infrastructure of society web 2.0, based on commodification of the monopolistically provided services. The article notes that the expansion of the Google Book Search Project resulted in the intensification of national and international initiatives for creation of digital libraries on the basis of information resources digitization programs. At the end of the article, a conclusion is made that the most valuable lesson that the library community can learn from the history of the Google Library Project development is to realize their own social and cultural identity, inadmissibility of copying the methods of the information giants.