[SIGCIS-Members] Google's poor stewardship of the USENET archive
Henry Lowood
lowood at stanford.edu
Thu Feb 26 15:54:29 PST 2015
Jim,
I agree with your approach, but I also would add two comments in support
of there being a problem.
1. Daniel Rehn knows this stuff inside-and-out. It is safe to rely on
what he says, assuming the quotations are accurate.
2. The loss of Advanced Search of Google Groups was a big deal; I found
that after it disappeared it became MUCH more difficult to do anything
useful with historical USENET posts. It is a source I used quite a bit,
before the change.
If we pursue the "query Google quietly" approach, I would be happy to be
one of the SHOT members.
Henry
On 2/26/2015 11:44 AM, jcortada University of Minnesota wrote:
> I strongly disagree with you, Al. That is definitely NOT the way to
> deal with this problem. First, you have no idea why there is a
> problem, what Google's intentions are, based on the article you are
> circulating. Second, Google executives have been supportive of the
> work and institutions relevant to the preservation of computing's
> history. I have personal, first hand knowledge of that. So why
> irritate the firm that is on your side?
>
> If you are concerned, first we would need to validate what the article
> says, second we should query Google quietly about the matter to see if
> in fact they are evil to us, or, as I suspect is more the case, other
> issues have impinged on access that we are not aware of. Google
> decisions makers saying grace over the site might not even be aware of
> the discomfort they are creating for historians and therefore might be
> willing to help us out. Perhaps a couple of representatives of SHOT
> or SIGCIS should reach out to Google in a calm, collected manner?
>
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 1:31 PM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org
> <mailto:aek at bitsavers.org>> wrote:
>
> Time to complain LOUDLY to Google about this!
>
> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/google-a-search-company-has-made-its-internet-archive-impossible-to-search
>
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>
> --
> James W. Cortada
> Senior Research Fellow
> Charles Babbage Institute
> University of Minnesota
> jcortada at umn.edu <mailto:jcortada at umn.edu>
> 608-274-6382
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
--
Henry Lowood
Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections;
Film & Media Collections
HSSG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall
Stanford University Libraries, Stanford CA 94305-6004
650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood
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