Questions and Praise for Google Web Library By FELICIA R. LEE [ http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/18/books/18libr.html ] Published: December 18, 2004 When Randall C. Jimerson, the president of the Society of American Archivists, heard of Google's plan to convert certain holdings at Oxford University and at some of the leading research libraries in the United States into digital files, freely searchable over the Web, he asked, "What are they thinking?" Mr. Jimerson had worries. Who would select the material? How would it be organized and identified to avoid mountains of decontextualized excerpts? Would Google users eventually forgo the experience of holding a book, actually seeing a historical document, the serendipity of slow research? But in recent interviews, many scholars and librarians applauded the announcement by Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, to digitize some of the collections at Oxford, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library. [snip] [MUCH MORE] /Gerry Gerry McKiernan Thinking Librarian Iowa State University Ames IA 50011 gerrymck@iastate.edu