google, the new yorker, and the economics of access

This will undoubtedly be making the rounds, if it hasn’t already, but The New Yorker has an article on Google Book Search that’s currently available online.

(The New Yorker, it is worth noting, is not committed to making its information universally accessible and useful, at least not unless you buy the Complete New Yorker DVDs. The magazine does not maintain an index of its articles on its website, and its indexing elsewhere has historically been somewhat sporadic. You can read more on the magazine’s indexing, or lack thereof, in the latest Ask the Librarians column at Emdashes, which is, to the best of my knowledge, a labor of love by a writer and New Yorker fan. I should note that, despite my snarky tone, I also am a fan of the magazine–I just wish they’d publish their past tables of contents online so I could remember what the hell issue I read, say, Calvin Trillin’s recently turned into a book piece about Alice. But of course then I’d have less reason to purchase the DVDs.)

6 thoughts on “google, the new yorker, and the economics of access”

  1. Yeah, yeah, I know there are alternative finding strategies–it just irks me because most publications will at least tell you which issue an article was in, even if they won’t let you read it without paying.

  2. Yeah–I kept wondering how much that one cost Target, and how much more it was than an average advertising take for an issue. The problem, of course, is that it’s such a good magazine that it can get away with a lot of crap and still have me coming back for more crumbs.

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