As someone who has had some success in using Google Books to locate the full text of certain books online and in finding which book contained a particular quote, I was surprised to see an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education called “Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars.” In the piece, Geoffrey Nunberg chronicles a series of mistakes that appear when one searches in Google Books. These include having the wrong date of publication, completely inappropriate subject headings, and typos in titles.
I suppose it is not surprising that a project as huge as Google Books, which is being worked on at a rapid speed, is bound to have a few glitches, but this article suggests that mistakes go way beyond the “few glitches” stage.
Google Books is a valuable tool with great potential for making the information found in major libraries available to people around the world. Let’s hope that Google can locate and repair the errors in this database.
I suppose it is not surprising that a project as huge as Google Books, which is being worked on at a rapid speed, is bound to have a few glitches, but this article suggests that mistakes go way beyond the “few glitches” stage.
Google Books is a valuable tool with great potential for making the information found in major libraries available to people around the world. Let’s hope that Google can locate and repair the errors in this database.
http://tinyurl.com/na5s3m
ReplyDeletethe article posted at the link above says librarians are fighting Google's efforts to digitize the world's books....
I don't know any librarians who are opposed to it, do you? Of course, I sympathize with the authors who want to be compensated for their work and don't want their material posted, but for those books that fairly available.... it makes my job even easier and promotes the free access to information -- the reason we all became librarians:)
Marissa, besides the sloppiness mentioned in the article, I believe most library objections are about Google's seeming monopoly of e-books and other technical matters. One ALA site has a document from which I drew the following:
ReplyDelete"The settlement will also permit purchase of perpetual online access for about $1.29 to $29.99.
A Public Access Service (PAS) will be available to public and academic libraries. Access will be limited to one computer terminal per institution. Users can print for a fee, but will not be able to cut, paste, or annotate. There will be four levels of participation: fully participating libraries, cooperating libraries, public domain libraries, and other libraries. The disadvantage is that Google will have a monopoly over these materials. Both the quality of the scans and the metadata provided for them is not good."
Despite this, I agree with you that Google Books is a valuable tool that often makes our jobs easier and more productive.