Google Books As "Train Wreck" For Scholars 160
Following up on our earlier discussion, here's more detail on Geoffrey Nunberg's argument that Google Books could prove detrimental to academics and other scholars. Recently Nunberg gave a talk at a conference claiming that the metadata in Google Books is riddled with errors and is classified in a scheme unfit for scholarly use. This blog post was fleshed out somewhat a few days later in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Quoting from the latter: "Start with publication dates. To take Google's word for it, 1899 was a literary annus mirabilis, which saw the publication of Raymond Chandler's Killer in the Rain, The Portable Dorothy Parker, [and] Stephen King's Christine... A search on 'internet' in books written before 1950 and turns up 527 hits. ... [Google blames some errors on the originating libraries.] ...the libraries can't be responsible for books mislabeled as Health and Fitness and Antiques and Collectibles, for the simple reason that those categories are drawn from the Book Industry Standards and Communications codes, which are used by the publishers to tell booksellers where to put books on the shelves. ... In short, Google has taken a group of the world's great research collections and returned them in the form of a suburban-mall bookstore." The head of metadata for Google Books, Jon Orwant, has responded in detail to Numberg's complaints in a comment on the original blog post — and says his team has already fixed the errors that Nunberg so helpfully pointed out.
Re:all the books in the world (Score:5, Funny)
They haven't finished counting Stephen King's books yet.
Re:Why Isn't Google Books A Library? (Score:3, Funny)
So you haven't read any of the stories that have appeared on Slashdot in regards to Google's plans for their Books service eh?
Intellectual Pissing Contest (Score:1, Funny)
*grabs popcorn*
Re:Why Isn't Google Books A Library? (Score:4, Funny)
With all the class act talent that Google hires right out of college, why can't Google create its own Public Library on the Internet? Chrome could be the entry way to any book that is in the Public Domain, or by the Authors written permission. Turning the page of a book could be as simple as the [Back], or [Next] button. The "Card Catalog" would be a No-Brainer. No Library goes through these many hops. There's even translation to other languages, Brail, and Audio; from my viewpoint, this SHOULD be the challenge, not what word category is or isn't. If it's a case of "buy the book", then to buy 10 copies of "Gone with the Wind", and ONLY allow up to 10 readers to ONLY read "Gone with the Wind". Google could even have a "Google Online Library Card"; this is were the company hums "Ka-Ching".
I think that's the idea, perhaps you should go check it out: http://books.google.com [google.com]
Re:Who needs metadata any more (Score:1, Funny)
Exactly. And the whole argument totally ignores the fact that these books are now easily available.
Shock horror: I am a liberal arts scholar. And Google Books has helped me incredibly in a project I am doing on a 18th century scholar. I have original texts in various editions at my fingertips, wonderful reference books (including a dozen 18th and 19th century Latin grammars), and serious secondary literature. Not all of these are fully posted on Google Books, but now I know what books to check out of the library, or even buy.
As an arts scholar, I love Google books.
Yes! That's the true value of Google Books! What would the world do without another liberal arts scholar doing being lazier than the prior generation? [Note: I didn't say smarter. I said, lazier.] The parent poster talking about standards is being smart and hits it out of the park for even lazy art scholars to get value out of a truly valuable research tool.
Google books is not that tool
There is no reason (Score:3, Funny)
There is no reason for you to post this comment here when you could have put together a properly formed and documented essay in a couple of months. There is was no reason for Newton to come up with his theory of gravity when in a few centuries Einstein would come up with a more complete theory.
This is a long term project for humanity. We damn well better start now rather than waiting to do it right. Badly data can be cross compared and corrected. Data which has not been digitized at all is completely useless (Towards the purpose of having digitized data). In the time it took you to complain about it you could have pulled up a few scans, and done some good old fashioned legwork in the form of copying it out in ASCII and redrawing the illustrations like clerks of old.