Comments on: Google Book Search’s metadata is a disaster

By: Mike Perry

Mike Perry — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:26:32 +0000

I agree with Felix Torres that “Google’s land grab,” if it is successful, is likely to prevent or at least delay the arrival of an online digital library that would be much better. It’s one of the central arguments in the letter I mailed yesterday to the judge in this dispute. You can download that letter before the judge gets a chance to read it from here:

http://inklingbooks.com/googlesettlement/files/JudgeChinLetter.pdf

Here’s a key passage in that letter:

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Still worse for research is Google’s quirky scheme to limit online display to only part of a book. Imagine a book from the 1930s in which a historian is describing some commonly held point of view. Just before his description ends, a researcher’s quota of screen displays runs out. He fails to read the next page, which begins, “The evidence, however, indicates that what I’ve just described is not true.” That’s bad. If you want to understand what a books says, you need the book itself, not this settlement’s castrated slice of it.

Keep in mind that I’m not against displaying books online. I use them all the time. What I’m against is a scheme that violates copyright on a vast scale, creating a vast collection that benefits no one but Google, and then in an odd spasm of self-flagination, appeases its guilt by ripping text out of its original context and striping out maps, graphs, and written by others (“inserts”). Books treated in such a brutal and cavalier fashion are virtually worthless for research.

I don’t want to criticize without being constructive. What’s needed isn’t a what Google wants to create, a kleptomaniac mad man’s attic cluttered, willy-nilly, with titles stolen (in copyright terms) from libraries. What’s needed is the sort of library we create for ourselves, one based on an intelligent selection of books that really matter, books that haven’t been mutilated in some mechanical fashion. Most important of all, we need a digital library that grows carefully over time rather than one that’s thrown together in haste like this one. Built wisely, the effort to locate an author and get the proper permission won’t require as much expense or trouble as this insane effort to digitize and database every paper text.

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It may be a bit vain to like your own words, but I love the expression, “a kleptomaniac mad man’s attic cluttered, willy-nilly, with titles stolen (in copyright terms) from libraries.” It’s hard to come up with a more apt expression of what Google is doing.

By: Felix Torres

Felix Torres — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:59:29 +0000

It isn’t quite true that Google’s crappy effort leaves scholars “no worse off” than if it didn’t exist because the terms of the infamous “class-action settlement” preclude anybody else being able to take a crack at doing the job right. Absent Google’s land-grab, the possibility would exist that some kind of public-private consortium might arise to do the job properly and still be economically viable while protecting traditional copyrights. The Goggle library, however, has in effect poisoned the well to the extent that even if google fails to gain their desired monopoly, no alternative is likely to emerge any time soon.
The only alternatives left in this timeline are the crappy google monopoly or nothing at all.

So much for doing no evil.

By: HeavyG

HeavyG — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:20:56 +0000

I think the two comments left at the linked site by:

mightythylacine – September 02, 2009 at 07:02 pm

and

gsheldon – September 02, 2009 at 08:59 pm

sum it up pretty nicely.

By: Carol A

Carol A — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:04:36 +0000

Google booksearch is certainly a disaster – but their policy of not making books available to non USA viewers is just shameful. There are ways around this – but ones we won’t tell Google! Google is quite prepared to take money from overseas advertisers and overseas users, but makes sure any value stays at home. So I don’t buy anything through Google adverts.
I am not sure who designed their user interface, but I get the impression they weren’t a big book user!

By: Chris Meadows

Chris Meadows — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:34:31 +0000

I guess Google never metadata it didn’t like.