Allison, one of my students in Reference, posted a message to the course discussion list in Blackboard about this, and I’m totally ripping her off for the sake of a blog post. Thanks, Allison!

Google is launching what they’re calling the Librarian Center. At present, this consists of 2 areas:

  1. A quarterly newsletter for librarians, containing “Google tips, news of new features, and other information relevant to you,” and
  2. Lesson plans: “We’ve heard from dozens of librarians who have created their own lesson plans, presentations and handouts to help others use Google. We’d love to see what works for our users.” There are as yet no links to these, though.

Is this Google trying to garner some goodwill among librarians, in light of the Google Print Library Project legal wrangles? Is this Google’s first move in the direction of trying to corner the lesson plan market? Time will tell.