So would you agree that it "changes everything?" Good to get different perspectives...

Which, now that I've actually written that out, I think means I've turned into the goth girl version of Giles.

You'd be the Best OFC ever.

And Dean would so totally just follow you around all wide-eyed and moonstruck, because you are Older and Bossing Him Around, which he totally digs AND you have a bosom of doom, which he also totally digs, while Sam rolls his eyes and makes pissy faces because of it.

PS, I think there's some smudged eyeliner going on in the pictures I linked to last night. Which, err. Yes. Mama like.

You'd be the Best OFC ever.

Hee! I think that's one of the oddest compliments I've ever gotten. I really like it.

while Sam rolls his eyes and makes pissy faces because of it.

Yeah, but I'd start calling him emo-boy, and ask him if he wanted to listen to The Smiths.

I want to see that episode!

I'd say google books is considerably more than a card catalog -- even with recent books, the content is searchable (you just can't read the whole thing straight through unless it's public domain). And even when online catalogs don't make me beat my head against a wall until it bleeds, they're still only searching the metadata; that's a pretty profound change for how people search, or even what information they think they're searching for.

But I still think "changes everything" is just a stupidly broad statement.

JEN SIGHTING!!!

Hey Jilli...I was talking to my friend last night and asked me if "emo" meant anything to me and I laughed and said, "yeah". Then she asked if "cutter" meant anything. I said, "Well, the peolpe that cut themselves to feel pain etc etc etc." and she said no that it was a goth thing. I'd never heard of it. Have you? Can you shed light?

Aimee, it sounds like you were not the one misunderstanding the various terms under discussion.

I don't think it changes Everything. But it does change some things. It makes discovery much easier for people without training in library skills. I imagine it will reduce the use of ILL for older materials. I think it will allow libraries to justify putting more older books off-site, if they are available as pdfs for free online.

Depending on how things go as Google deals with publishers (in negotiations and in court) it has the potential to change more.

And if I were still a field archaeologist, for example, to be able to look at important books - that are in some cases fairly rare and only held in a few selected libraries - while actually in the field, to have pictures from old publications available to compare with the artifacts I'm digging up, without xeroxing the indexes to 40 books before taking off for the middle of nowhere? Coooool.

It's especially stupid when you consider the quote is by Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress.