NPR on public libraries' concern over Google's aspiration for one world library of books

National Public Radio's All Things Considered" did a great 5 minute segment on: "Some Libraries Shun Google in Book Battle."

The story is set up as who should control the world's future virtual libraries as libraries and Google rush to digitize the world's books?

• Several public libraries object to Google digitizing all their books and are doing it themselves.
• They worry about a "single corporate entity" having so much power over the world's information.
• If the old adage is true, that information is power, there is reason to worry.

I note this story because these libraries are a spontaneous and very real grass roots response to Google's megalomaniacal mission: to organize the world's information and make it universally available and useful."

• These public library advocates worried out loud about how much more effective censorship could be if "a single corporate entity" controlled the world's main library and how would they respond to political pressure to ban a book or an author?
  • This is a relavant concern because Google has censored search results in China, Turkey and Thailand to name a few known instances. 

Google should take note. Here is a grass roots rebellion brewing from their left flank, which looks un-willing to be bought off by Google to go away. 

What these grass roots folks care about is true "free access to all" by the public to library books and information.

• It seems these public library folks also implicitly understand Google's real master plan for books -- to become THE world's library of digital content.
• No need to have any competition from local or regional libraries -- not when Google has organized the world's information and made it universally available and useful.
  • Seems like the public libraries are beginning to figure out that there is no place or purpose for them to exist in Google's master plan to organize/control all the world's information.

Public libraries are just one of many kinds of content that are slowly starting to figure out that if Google organizes all the world's information -- there is no need for them.