Google Books Meets Stith Thompson

Craig Fehrman has published an essay in Nuvo: Indy’s Alternative Voice that looks at the state of the Google Books project through the lens of the Indiana University Library’s wonderful and legendary Folklore Collection. (Much of) the Folklore Collection has been digitized in partnership with the Google Book project. Its greatness as a collection stems from the efforts of long-serving Distinguished Service Professor Stith Thompson (1885-1976), the founder of what is today the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. Fehrman uses the story to make a case for copyright reform and is particularly disturbed by the way that vernacular culture becomes enclosed through publication.