Krugman & Texas Strategy; UT & Google Books project

Sat Jan 20 19:21:20 UTC 2007

The University of Texas has joined the Google Books project to digitize  
millions of books not protected by copyright. Google makes it free to  UT, so 
they're doing it. God forbid UT subscribes to even the digitized Dallas  Morning 
News--that they can't do?
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I e-mailed the New York Public Library ("Ask-a-Librarian") that the  New York 
Tribune 1900-1910 (made possible with federal funds) should be  available to 
everyone off-site, such as the Brooklyn Public Library has done  with the 
Brooklyn Daily Eagle. It had the name Barry Popik attached, so no one  responds. 
Maybe I'll re-type those slang articles that I found in December, but  they're 
long.
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The New York Times's Paul Krugman wrote a few days ago about the "Hail  Mary" 
and the "Texas Strategy." (Wikipedia's "Hail Mary" comes up first and is  
wrong, but I can't change it and give away my work for free.) A  
letter-to-the-editor in today's Austin Statesman (where Krugman's column  also appeared) takes 
offense to the term "Texas Strategy." Any database hits on  FACTIVA? 
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_http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/01/20/20utgoogle.htm
l_ 
(http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/01/20/20utgoogle.html) 

UT, Google to put university's books online
Copyright laws to be respected, campus officials say.

By Ralph K. M. Haurwitz
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday,  January 20, 2007 
More than 1 million volumes from the libraries of the University of Texas  
will be made available on the Internet under an agreement between the university 
 and Google Inc., officials announced Friday.  
The initiative is part of a project by the search engine giant, based in  
Mountain View, Calif., to put books from major libraries on its Web site. The  
New York Public Library, the University of California, the University of  
Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University and Oxford University are  among 
the participants. UT is the 11th library to partner with Google.  
"Creating digital access to our library collections will enable a great many  
more scholars and members of the public to locate and use these tremendously  
valuable materials," UT President William Powers Jr. said in a statement.  
Google said it was especially pleased to be gaining access to UT's Nettie Lee 
 Benson Latin American Collection, which contains about 950,000 books,  
periodicals and pamphlets.  
No money will change hands between UT and Google under a six-year contract  
the parties have signed, officials said.  
"Google pays for the cost of picking up the books, digitizing the books,  
putting them in the Google Books Web site and returning the books to UT," said  
Doug Barnett, a spokesman for UT Libraries. "UT is responsible for selecting 
the  books and bringing them to a central collection point for Google, so the 
costs  associated with that process would be absorbed by the libraries."  
Barnett said meetings are planned for next week to begin working out a plan  
for picking the works, delivering them to Google and scanning them into an  
electronic form. Megan Lamb, a spokeswoman for Google, said the company operates 
 scanning centers around the nation and abroad but doesn't disclose where it  
scans specific collections.  
Officials said they didn't know how long it would take to scan the UT  
volumes. The contract could be renewed at the end of its term or revised before  
then, and it wouldn't be unusual to increase the number of books, Lamb said.  
UT's 13 libraries hold more than 9 million volumes.  
The arrangement benefits the university in broad ways, Barnett said.  
"We think it directly serves our mission, as libraries of a research  
university, to help people discover knowledge," he said. "Having the books  
searchable through Google Books will mean that many more people trying to locate  
information will find out about books we own."  
In addition, he said, the project will help preserve the works because the  
digital versions might outlast the physical copies.  
Google and UT said books no longer protected by copyright law would be  
digitized in their entirety, with users able to read and download every word.  For 
books under copyright law, which protects authors from having their work  
copied without permission, users will be able to obtain the title, the author's  
name, information on how to borrow or buy the book and perhaps a few lines of  
text. UT said publishers or authors would have the option of excluding their  
books from the project.  
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_http://www.insidebayarea.com/argus/oped/ci_5022511_ 
(http://www.insidebayarea.com/argus/oped/ci_5022511) 

The 'Texas strategy' goes on

Article Last Updated: 01/16/2007 06:59:04 AM  PST
Paul Krugman writes for the New York Times.

HUNDREDS of news articles and  opinion pieces have described President Bush's 
decision to escalate the Iraq war  as a "Hail Mary pass."  
But that's the wrong metaphor. Bush isn't Roger Staubach, trying to pull out  
a win for the Dallas Cowboys. He's Charles Keating, using other people's 
money  to keep Lincoln Savings going long after it should have been shut — and  
squandering the life savings of thousands of investors, not to mention billions  
in taxpayer dollars.  
The parallel is actually quite exact. During the savings and loan scandal of  
the 1980s, people like Keating kept failed banks going by faking financial  
success. Bush has kept a failed war going by faking military success.  
One of the techniques used by the owners of savings and loan associations to  
generate phony profits came to be known as the "Texas strategy."  
Bank owners were certainly gambling — with other people's money, of course — 
 in the hope of a miraculous recovery that would bail out their negative 
balance  sheets.  
But the real point of the racket was a form of looting: as long as they could 
 keep reporting high paper profits, S&L owners could keep rewarding  
themselves with salaries, dividends and sweetheart business deals.  
Keating paid himself a million dollars just before his holding company  
collapsed.  
Which brings us to Iraq. The administration has spent the last three years  
pretending that its splendid little war isn't a big disaster. There have been  
the bromides (we're making "good progress"); the promises (we have a "strategy 
 for victory"); and, as always, attacks on the media for not reporting the 
good  news from Iraq.  
Who you gonna believe, the president or your lying eyes?  
Now Bush has grudgingly sort-of admitted that things aren't going well — but  
he says his "new way forward" will fix everything.  
It's still the Texas strategy: the war's architects are trying to keep their  
failed venture going as long as possible.  
The Hail Mary aspect — the off chance that somehow, things really will turn  
out all right — is the least of their motivations. The real intent is a form 
of  looting. I'm not talking mainly about old-fashioned war profiteering, 
although  there is no question that profiteering is taking place on an epic scale. 
No, I'm  saying that the hawks want to keep this war going because it's to 
their personal  and political benefit. (...) 
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_http://www.statesman.com/search/content/editorial/stories/01/20/20Letters_edi
t.html_ 
(http://www.statesman.com/search/content/editorial/stories/01/20/20Letters_edit.html)  
(LETTERS, SATURDAY, 1-20-07) 
Don't mess with Texas  
I acknowledge the need for newspapers to publish diverse opinions in their  
commentary pages, but I am outraged that the American-Statesman would publish a 
 column slandering the state of Texas.  
The Statesman has often republished ultra-liberal Paul Krugman's New York  
Times column, which consistently bashes the Bush administration. However, in the 
 Jan. 18 issue, the Statesman went too far in presenting his leftist opinions 
 ("Using Texas-style tactics").  
It is disgraceful, and an affront to all Texans, for the Statesman to allow a 
 column that likened the conduct of the war to a "Texas strategy" using  
"Texas-style" tactics. Krugman described these Texas strategies as failures,  
citing the 1980s savings and loan scandals led by Charles Keating as typical  
Texas operations.  
He further implied that the Bush Texas strategy is to keep the war going so  
that the hawks can continue their "profiteering of epic scale" for their  
"personal and political benefit."  
Such trash does not warrant publication.  
LEONARD PEDERSON  
Wimberley 

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