Web to Doom Dewey Decimal?

The power of Google and Amazon could force libraries to give up their long relied upon standards and convert to web information technology in order to stay relevant, according to library automation company Talis (found via Information World Review.

The company suggests that users are becoming so accustomed to searching via Google and Amazon that libraries should move to web information technologies such as XML or else people will no longer want to use them.

It's true that the library search interfaces for finding books or article citations look they are from the Plestocine era when compared to "natural" search engine queries, but Google and Amazon are also far from perfect and could probably learn as much from the best of library science as they could offer.

However, retooling the world's library systems to be more Googlish would be an incredibly expensive proposition, so perhaps the search companies who might most benefit from upgrading library IT (MSFT, Google, Yahoo, Amazon) should donate some major coinage to kick off the project. It does make sense to find the common ground as Google et al start scanning the world's print resources, rather than have two competing infrastructures.

The possibility is there -- by streamlining library searches online and imbedding context sensitive ads, a great deal of the cost of supporting libraries could be recouped through revenue share. However, this screws up the whole public/private concept, and is unlikely to happen.