Google, the Web, and the Future Roles of Publishers and Librarians

Co-sponsored by the iSchool at Drexel University

When:
June 26, 2009

Location:
Drexel University
Creese Student Center
32nd and Chestnut Streets
Grand Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19104

  Final Agenda

 In January 1996, two Stanford University students began a research project that is now known worldwide as Google. By April 2009 it had captured 81.38% of the global search engine market share and has evolved into an information resource of choice, not only for the general public, but for faculty, students and researchers around the globe. Google's objective is to make the world's knowledge accessible to everyone. With digitization projects, Google Books, and Google Scholar, it is moving steadily towards fulfilling that objective. How will their potential success impact traditional content providers and librarians? What role will publishers and librarians ultimately play in a Web-dominated information environment?

This meeting will take a look at Google's evolution and the role that it is positioned to play in the future. It will examine its acceptance by scholars and researchers, as well as the growth opportunities that it currently offers to content providers. It will also highlight the unique value being offered by traditional abstracting and indexing services that provide access to credible, authoritative content, and take a look at how librarians and corporate information specialists are ensuring that scholars and scientists get the right answers to their search queries -- answers critical to efficient and cost-effective research.

9:00am - 9:05am: Welcome

Bonnie Lawlor, NFAIS Executive Director

Moderator: Judy Luther, President, Informed Strategies

9:05am - 9:45am: Google: Past, Present and Future

Searchers worldwide view Google as their information resource of first choice. But Google is not solely a search company. A look at its patents indicates that it seeks a much more complex role in the information world. Stephen Arnold, author of The Google Legacy (2005) and Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator (2007), and now Google: The Digital Guttenberg (2009), will share his knowledge of Googles evolution, his analysis of their patents, and his understanding of their publishing technologies to shed insights on their competitive advantage and the role that they can play in the future of information access and retrieval.

Stephen E. Arnold, President, Arnold Information Technology [ Slides]

9:45am - 11:15am: Google: Its Acceptance by Scholars and Researchers

This session will focus on how - and why - Google is being used as an information resource by academic and corporate researchers. In addition, a young doctoral student will discuss the information resources that he uses and the role that Google plays in his information search and retrieval activities.

Michael Buschman, Senior Product Manager, Serials Solutions [ Slides]; Nancy L. Klein, Product Support Specialist, Competitor News Information, GlaxoSmithKline [ Slides]; Hasan Ayaz, Ph.D. candidate, Biomedical Engineering, Drexel University [ Slides];

11:15am - 11:30am: Break and Networking Opportunity

11:30am - 12:30pm: Google: An Opportunity for Content Providers

Google currently has an 81.4% global search engine market share. As a result it can serve as a "marketing" channel for content providers, exposing their journals, books, and other information resources to a broad, global audience. In this session several publishers will discuss the challenges and successes of using Google as a means of increasing market awareness and revenue growth.

Terry Hulbert, Director, Business Development, American Institute of Physics [ Slides]; Michael Jensen, Director of Strategic Web Communications,The National Academies,The National Academies Press [ Slides]

12:30pm - 1:30pm: Lunch (will be provided)

1:30pm - 3:00pm: Abstracting & Indexing Services: Value Beyond Google for Today's Scholars and Researchers

The essential role of Abstracting and Indexing (A&I) services has been to allow scholars to navigate masses of credible, authoritative information across multiple scholarly and scientific disciplines with relative ease. Over decades (in some cases, over more than a century) these services have amassed bodies of information, serving as the continuum between past, current and future scholarly thinking. And they, too, are available on the Web. This session will highlight the value gained by using the search tools and information resources offered by today's abstracting and indexing services.

James Pringle, Vice President, Development, Thomson Reuters, Healthcare and Science business [ Slides]; Don Hagen, Associate Director, National Technical Information Services (NTIS) [ Slides]; Linda Beebe, Senior Director, PsycINFO, American Psychological Association [ Slides]

3:00pm - 3:15pm: Break and Networking Opportunity

3:15pm - 4:15pm: Libraries: Value Beyond Google for Todays Scholars and Researchers

This session will focus on how corporate and academic libraries are changing their value proposition to attract users to their physical (or virtual) space and successfully compete with search Engines and the Web. It will also look at how librarians and corporate information specialists are ensuring that the scholars and scientists that they serve obtain the quality search results that are essential to efficient and cost-effective research.

Anne Prestamo, Associate Dean for Collection and Technology Services, Oklahoma State University [ Slides]; Melissa Brown, Manager, Content Integration & Analysis, Bristol-Myers Squibb [ Slides]

4:15pm - 5:00pm: The Future Role of Libraries and A&I Services in a Web Environment

Roy Tennant, Senior Program Officer, OCLC Programs and Research [ Slides]

Roy Tennant, Senior Program Officer for OCLC Programs and Research and former Project Manager for the Digital Library Research & Development Department of the University of California, Berkeley Library will share his insights on the future role of libraries and publishers in the face of Web information resources such as Google, and discuss what they must do in order to ensure that that they continue to meet the information needs of future generations scholars and researchers.

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