[SIGCIS-Members] Google's poor stewardship of the USENET archive

[Henry Lowood]

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
>
>
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-- 
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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