Session 1009 - Google: The New Library Vendor
Greg Sennema, Electronic Services Librarian, Wilfrid Laurier University, gave an interesting presentation (available at newlibraryvendor.googlepages.com) which highlighted a large number of Google products and services and showed how useful they can be in our library environment. To illustrate this point the entire presentation was developed and presented using Google tools.
Greg indicated that although our exhibit hall is filled with vendors that may get mention in a few of the sessions at the conference, it is vendors such as Google that are regularly referred to (although not always in a good light) in the majority of sessions and it is Google that is affecting us in our work more so than other traditional library vendors.
To illustrate the wide reach that Google has, Greg demonstrated various Google services and tools and highlighted how they in many cases are better than other enterprise tools. To highlight a few (and there were many more):
- Google Calendar has the ability to publish your calendar to a web page
- Vast storage and great usability of Gmail
- Google Image Labeler game for providing tags for images
- Google Maps Street View for many US cities
- Google Docs for collaboratively editing documents
- Using Google Search for definitions, stock quotes, etc.
With the Google Maps Street View there are implications for user privacy as images of people become associated with certain buildings. The privacy issue also raises its head with the storage of GMail and calendaring data on US servers, an issue that Lakehead University is coping with as they have contracted to use Google main and calendaring services.
Greg encouraged us to look several years ahead to see how some of Google’s services will impact how we provide services – will it be more cost efficient to purchase a print on demand book via Google Books or do a traditional ILL and what will happen when Google eventually reaches their goal of organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible.