Joyce Valenza’s Neverending Search

Last week I followed the news about Amazon’s (and perhaps, Google’s) plan to sell book content to searchers by section by section or page by page.  http://business.bostonherald.com/technologyNews/view.bg?articleid=110321

The blogosphere appeared to rock with predictions regarding the future of libraries. 

I worry too.  I worry mostly about equity.  My students will likely be able to buy their information just as they happily buy up their favorite accessories at Abercrombie.  But will all students have that same access? 

I also wonder about all that information that is already provided online for FREE through library and school databases.  Do most folks know about their statewide databases?  If they did, perhaps Amazon’s announcement would not have been such big news.

In a recent issue of Teacher-Librarian (Feb. 2005), Mary Ann Bell examines the available databases and lists the portal sites for each state.  http://www.teacherlibrarian.com/tlmag/v_32/v_32_3_feature.html

In Pennsylvania, for instance, my students already have FREE access to netLibrary, which offers them access to more than 50,000 FREE e-books.  And, through our state’s Access PA POWER LIBRARY http://www.powerlibrary.org/Interface/POWER.asp?ID=PL2870, they have access to: EBSCOhosts remarkable reference and journal literature, Facts for Learning, the AP Multimedia Archive, Grove’s Art and Music, SIRS Discoverer, Oxford Reference, and so much more!  Joining all this FREE information, in my school, and in many others, students have FREE access to additional databases supported by their schools. http://mciu.org/~spjvweb/catalogs.html

We must do a better job of getting the word out.  We must come up with truly viable federated search solutions. Getting to what students and other people need is not all that easy. But people ought not have pay for what they already own.