Talk:Google Books/Archive 1

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Reference Template

Is there a reference template for Links to Google Book pages?--Skyfiler 18:51, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there is the template {{GBS}} . Explanation how it works on its talk page. Longbow4u 15:54, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Example: Charles Dickens: The adventures of Oliver Twist  Guinea-Bissau (Written as {{GBS|k1EoAAAAMAAJ}} ) Longbow4u 15:59, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
This template no longer works. Perhaps there will be another some time. Longbow4u 14:25, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Citing sources/example style#Electronic equivalents has an example of how an inline citation may include google book search. — Athaenara ✉ 20:40, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Is this so?

When relevant to a user's keyword search, up to three results from the Google Book Search index are displayed above search results in the Google Web Search service (google.com).

Not for me. I get three items from Google News, sometimes, but not from Google Book Search. If preferences need to be set for this, or something, maybe the article should say so. qp10qp 01:03, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Errors

I just checked it out, and it's a rather error-ridden database. For example, when searching there's many instances when the scanner interpeted a printed "P" as an "F". However, I'm not really sure where to put that in this article, or even if I should, and if I should, if I should put that here or perhaps in the "book scanning" or "Optical character recognition" articles. Kevin 23:23, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Mention OCR errors in this article in a "quality" section or something. — Omegatron 03:40, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Found lots of errors in several books from Google Books, pictures of fingers where text should be, pictures of a page being turned where a scanned page should be, etc. While I've found a lot of useful text @ Google Books, a lot of pages in many books should really be rescanned if this project is to be taken seriously. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.114.211.20 (talk) 09:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Microsoft?

The following sentence seemed a bit odd/misleading:

As of 2006, neither Google nor Microsoft would reveal how many books they have already scanned.

As this is (currently) the article's first mention of microsoft, it seems to imply that microsoft and google may be working together on scanning books, or that microsoft might have special knowledge on how many books google has scanned. The footnote is to an article called "Microsoft starts online library in challenge to Google Books", which clears things up a bit (nothing else in the article hints that this might be the case).--Eloil 18:34, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it is not clear. The sentence is trying to say 2 things at the same time. I moved down the reference to Microsoft, with a mention of the name Live Search Books.82.229.209.33 (talk) 18:33, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Feedback?

Moved this paragraph from the article

There does not appear to be any effective mechanism in place for readers to be able to report errors or missing pages; or to obtain the missing words or pages and be able to read and comprehend the work being read. Problems may be reported but only a form-message is sent in response and nothing is done to correct the problem.

"Nothing is done" is a very strong criticism to be given without any citation. The paragraph is/was the first mention of errors or omissions and does not, I suspect, fairly describe the feedback system as it is described further in the article. Asserting that there is not any "effective" mechanism sounds like original research/complaining to me. Citations of the problem, and citations on the alleged inefficacy of Google's feedback process, please.

The removed paragraph is accurate, and should be restored to the article. There is not "any effective mechanism in place for readers to be able to report errors or missing pages; or to obtain the missing words or pages and be able to read and comprehend the work being read." Most, perhaps all, of the old (pre-1923) technical books have had many or all of their images deleted from the book. Google is completely unresponsive to bug reports, and I fear that libraries will dispose of the physical books, working under the false belief that Google has actually preserved digital copies of these books. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.251.82.231 (talk) 00:48, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Robotic Page Turner

Regarding the fourth reference. I'm pretty sure it's a person's hand. It just looks strange because the finger tips are covered in a rubber which helps them turn the pages. If you search for google books errors in google images you'll see many more examples eg. http://libertarian-labyrinth.org/working/withthisring.jpg

I have some doubts myself, & there is also a rumor that they use a blower of some sort. There should be some refs. on some of the listservs, lets check. At worst, I'll ask. Depending on who answers , it may be a usable source. DGG 04:19, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm sure they don't turn them by hand. Those fingers could be holding something down, putting the book back into the scanner after a problem, etc. — Omegatron 03:41, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Timeline on the trials against Google

Date Explanation Location File/Case number
September 20, 2005 The Authors Guild et. al. v. Google. [1] United States District Court Southern District of New York S.D. N.Y. Case No. 05-CV-8136-JES
September 26, 2006 Google files a notice that it intends to subpoena Yahoo! Inc.; Microsoft Corporation; the Association of American of Publishers, Inc.; Random House, Inc.; Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC; and HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.[2]

Notice also states: Class Action complaint, Jury trial requested.

United States District Court Southern District of New York .
November 20, 2006 Yahoo responds to Google's Subpoena.[3] United States District Court Northern District of California .
October 20, 2006 Amazon.com, Inc. objects to Google, Inc.'s subpoena which sought documents relating to the Amazon Book Project.[4] Washington Western District Court .
. . . .

Travb (talk) 00:43, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

University of Mysore

It seems to be that the University of Mysore partnership information is incorrect. Google does not list them in their partners page, and until it appears there, it should not be listed here. Bwwm 21:42, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I have removed Mysore (again). They are not listed on the partners page. See Partners Bwwm (talk) 01:43, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

At first blush, your reasoning would seem attractive, plausible, sound; but as it happens, the specific Google information page you cite is not representative of the current state of the [Google Books Library Project]]. For example, if you click on the links for Bavarian State Library Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and for National Library of Catalonia (Biblioteca de Catalunya), you'll find the result is unhelpful. In contrast, if you click on the link for Ghent University Library (Boekentoren), you'll discover that the Flemish info page has been replaced by a more fully-developed text in English. The world has moved on since this page was created. It remains as something of a historical artifact -- an illustration of what thing were like at one point in time, but no more.
There is no question that Mysore is an active participant in the digitization project -- indeed, you need only enter "University of Mysore" and "Google Books" in any search engine to confirm this for yourself. If you want to improve to this article by sharing the results of your further investigations, by all means do so. However, it would be unhelpful to delete Mysore from this article or from other related articles.
If you have the time or interest in improving articles about other partners in this loose consortium, your help would no be appreciated, of course. --Ooperhoofd (talk) 14:19, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for your observations. I recommend finding a reference either from the University of Mysore website, or from the Google Books website. If we can do that, then let's add it in. If not, then we reporting conjecture. I have not been able to find those references. If you can do so, please go ahead.
It also seems to me that the problems you cite with the links on the partners page does not invalidate the list itself. Bwwm (talk) 14:33, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
User:Bwwm -- In my view, there is a burden of proof and production which you need to bear in this instance. Where is the evidence which supports your decision to remove a demonstrable fact which is supported by a verifiable in-line citation? What, for example, informs an opinion that Mysore's librarians are not in the process of digitizing unique, archived records and uploading that material for Internet access? Without more, your insistence on removing the University of Mysore from Google Book Search and Google Books Library Project cannot prevail, e.g.,
To reiterate what remains fundamental and (thus far) undisputed:
There is no question that Mysore is an active participant in the digitization project -- indeed, you need only enter "University of Mysore" and "Google Books" in any search engine to confirm this for yourself. If you want to improve to this article by sharing the results of your further investigations, by all means do so. However, it would be unhelpful to delete Mysore from this article or from other related articles.
It would seem like a waste of time to invite a third opinion, but perhaps it will prove helpful? --Ooperhoofd (talk) 16:53, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
See: Wikipedia:Third opinion#Active disagreements ...:
  • Talk:Google Book Search#University of Mysore. Disagreement over inclusion of Mysore on the list of participants in the Google digitization project. Insistent deletion of Mysore from list of participants in Google digitization project, despite the offer of proof in the form of in-line citations.17:23, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
What more should anyone be expected to do in an effort to avoid an unseemly edit war? --Ooperhoofd (talk) 17:23, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
I'll email Google and ask them. Hopefully that'll resolve it. I have no interest in an edit war, and I don't think a third opinion is useful at this point. Bwwm (talk) 13:37, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
So Google finally answered my email. This is my exchange with them:
Hi,
There are many reports on the internet that the University of Mysore
is a participant in this project. They are not listed on the library
partners page, nor mentioned anywhere in this blog. Could you please
clarify whether they are a partner or not?
Thank you,
This is their response:
Hello,
Thanks for your message. I appreciate your interest in Google Book Search
We keep the page at:
http://books.google.com/googlebooks/partners.html
Updated with the most current information regarding our partners in the
Library Project. I hope that this information is helpful to you.
Sincerely,
Dan
The Google Book Search Team
So according to Google, the University of Mysore is not a partner. Bwwm (talk) 22:01, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Third opinion

Hey. I'm of the opinion that this source, which is linked in the article, shows that Mysore is working with Google on this project. It says "the new partnership with Mysore", so that seems pretty cut and dry for me. Hope this helps; let me know if there's anything else I can do to help. — HelloAnnyong (say whaaat?!) 20:02, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

This citation, while seemingly persuasive for User:HelloAnnyong, remains inadequate for the editor whose position was earlier informed by an out-of-date Google page ... and now this view has been apparently reinforced by a carelessly unresponsive e-mail from someone at Google. It would be helpful if HelloAnnyong would re-visit this dispute with a construction suggestion about how to resolve an apparent impasse.
Despite the Google imprimatur, the current inaccuracies in this specific web page are relevant. Despite the 2008 dating at the bottom of the page, it is demonstrable that the site has not been maintained nor updated since the Google Books Library Project was first announced. In this context, it matters that Sidney Verba, the head of Harvard University's library has resigned since this page was created. Verba was the point-man at Harvard in the negotiations which led to the Harvard-Google partnership; and his words are prominently featured on this out-of-date page. In addition, Ronald Milne, the former head of Oxford University's library, has since left Oxford for a position at the British Library. Milne's words are also featured. In addition, as noted above, some of the links no longer connect with relevant press release text at the partner institutions.
Perhaps a tentative step forward could involve modifying the article text to focus only on the original partner institutions -- the ones mentioned on the questioned Google page. A further sub-separate section could be developed for institutions like the University of Mysore which joined the partnership after the initial phase of development? --Tenmei (talk) 00:49, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news on this, but it's entirely speculation that Mysore is not involved at this point. Just because a bunch of people left does not mean that the project is over. Also, I'm taking that letter from Google above with a grain of salt. I propose that the best solution is to report both sides: that is, add somewhere that Mysore has been reported to be part of the project with a reference, but that it is not listed on the Google book page. If you show both sides, I think it's even handed. What do you think, Tenmei? — HelloAnnyong (say whaaat?!) 02:41, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I made the change you suggested, e.g.,
  • "The number of participating institutions has grown since the inception of the Google Books Library Project; however, only the original set of institutional partners are listed on the web page currently maintained by Google:[1]"
The in-line citation leads to the Library Project partner's web page. --Tenmei (talk) 03:04, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I recommend a different wording, because all the other partners listed are on the partners page. In fact, the partners listed on that page are not the original ones and so the division you currently have is not the best. Look at the timeline in our page here at Wikipedia and you'll see that for example, Columbia university is the most recent library added, and is listed among the partner on the Google page. How about putting Mysore at the end of the list with the following: "The University of Mysore has been mentioned in many media reports as being a library partner. They are not, however, listed as a partner by Google." We could provide all the references. Bwwm (talk) 20:0ed view?4, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
That'd be fine by me. — HelloAnnyong (say whaaat?!) 21:14, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Upload

How to upload a document to Google Book for full view/limited preview? Anwar (talk) 15:12, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Image

Hello. Image:Digitized by Google-20060530.jpg that was removed by a shared IP address without comment this spring is restored; nicer to show that real people scan all these books, whether by hand or by machine. —SusanLesch (talk) 21:48, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Check out this one. I can't quite seem to read all the text. —Kevin Myers 14:59, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I flagged that page as unreadable when I wrote the above, and they've already replaced the hand-covered page with a readable image. Nice work! —Kevin Myers 23:39, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Timeline

The timeline needs to be rewritten so that tense is kept constant. ThunderkatzHo! 02:49, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

missing sources link?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books.google.com#Number_scanned Upon reading the following line "Google has said that they are scanning more than 3,000 books per day, a rate that translates into more than 1 million annually." and checking out the source, I am incapable of finding any information on the number of books scanned per day. It says "Google has already digitized one million volumes.", not sure if it says anything about doing it annually though. Can somebody have a look and perhaps confirm this? Just to get a second opinion... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.88.226.203 (talk) 12:24, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

No, you are quite right; I've checked the NYT source as well and cannot find the content allegedly supported by it. I've removed it and another claim whose reference failed to check out. Thanks for bringing this to our attention; in future you can use {{not in source}} to tag references which fail to verify the text. Again, thank you! Skomorokh 12:35, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Metadata criticism

Interesting article here.  Skomorokh  15:09, 3 September 2009 (UTC)


OCR software

Is it known which OCR software is used here? --Traut (talk) 14:27, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Maybe the answer is Tesseract. --Traut (talk) 16:43, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Copyright ?

Hello everyone, i understand the enthusiam that one can find the book-text in this instant easy accesible way. BUT somehow i got kind of nervous about copyright. Is it "fair" that everyone can find (read and use) text itself, for example a very specific medicine-book, writen to study ecography/ultrasonic ... without paying it? I know it sounds odd but, i'm also wandering why nowbody until now in this discussion has mentioned the point. (hey,google is way to big, dont you think? ) Tim

this is an incredibly complicated question. To summarize very briefly, under the currently proposed settlement, as far as US readers and US publishers are concerned, the general public, they will be able to read free works that are out of copyright, and works no longer available from publishers and whose copyright holder does not object, or cannot be identified or located; for other books, they will be permitted to read small excerpts. I would expect that most current scientific works will not be in the scheme, though perhaps older editions will. If you wish to read current medical books, there are a limited number of large public libraries which have them--as well as most universities for those connected with the university. DGG ( talk ) 02:51, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Update

This article should be updated to reflect the name change to Google Books; it is no longer Google Book Search, and it is no longer in beta. Logan Talk Contributions 16:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Done! Hiberniantears (talk) 19:39, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Ironically, when searching in Google for Google Books, the following snippet appears (emphasis added):
Search and preview millions of books from libraries and publishers worldwide using Google Book Search. Discover a new favorite or unearth an old classic.
It seems that even Google isn't quite sure what they want to call it.  :-) ~ MD Otley (talk) 21:04, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

basically the question is not why Paris sued them

but why USA can't get sue them? --94.70.88.202 (talk) 01:35, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

University of Texas

The article stated:

“As of late 2008, the University of Texas has withdrawn from continuing to help the digitization project”

There is no source for this claim in the article and I have contradictory information from an official Google Books Blog entry, dated February 10, 2010:

“Today, we are proud to announce the completion of our digitization project with the University of Texas Libraries and the inclusion of over 500,000 unique volumes into the Google Books index.”

http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2010/02/sharing-latin-american-works-from.html

Therefore I deleted the sentence. If I got something wrong I´d like to apologize and ask for a source for this claim.--RKoenig (talk) 14:58, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Unclear sentence

The word decided in the sentence Results from Google Book Search show up in both general web search at google.com and through the decided Google Books site doesn't make sense to me. Since I can't determine the intent of the sentence, I don't feel comfortable fixing it. Catchoo (talk) 15:50, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Index of public domain books

Hi. An article reference claims: "Of the seven million books Google has scanned, one million are in full preview mode as part of formal publisher agreements. Another one million are public domain works." Is there available an index for the public domain books? emijrp (talk) 16:34, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Other public domain digitization efforts

I find it interesting that one of the older successful digitization schemes, Project Gutenberg, is completely ignored, even as a comparison reference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.173.221.81 (talk) 21:10, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Correction to the above: I had expected to find Project Gutenberg noted early in the article, but did not find it directly referenced in the main article page. I later found a reference buried under See Also: List of Digital Library projects. I still think Project Gutenberg should be explicitly mentioned at least in passing as a pivotal non-profit predecessor somewhere near the -Competetors- area, because of the similar intended scope of the two projects... Google just had more money to throw at the effort, besides using it as a commercial venture with advertising.

Update - Competition section

  • Most of the data from the Competition section refers to 2008. Could anyone update that? Xosé (talk) 21:45, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia citations to Google Books

See also: fr:Wikipédia:Oracle/semaine 32 2019 § Raréfaction des sources en ligne ?

Google Books is not a reliable long term site for linking citations on Wikipeida: Google makes no promise it will maintain the archive in current format; URL formats may change; books may switch from free to pay, since publishers re-publish old titles and Google removes them as free; Google may go out of business or be acquired; Google may determine books are no longer profitable and cancel or change the service.

Yet, Google is a huge resource, what is one to do? There are two solutions: Internet Archive and HathiTrust. Both these sites mirror books from Google, plus have additional books they have scanned independently. In fact both these sites are larger than Google, in terms of Public Domain titles. Most people think of Google Books is the biggest/best, but it's really a poor quality also-ran whose future is uncertain. Probably the best site for long-term linking is HathiTrust because its run and maintained by the same University libraries where Google scanned the books originally. They have stated the links will be permanent and unchanging for 1000 years (or however long these Universities are in existence). If your serious about citations to scanned books that will last, it's the one to use. Green Cardamom (talk) 20:36, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

More Criticism

The Google Books user experience is in short unsatisfactory. For one, whether pages are turned by hand or by robot (see section "Robotic Page Turner" above), errors are too much that they should be done purposedly. Any consensus on that?

Two, most pages are monochrome.

Three, Google doesn’t provide access to non copyright material on its site for no stated reason!

In short, they should leave sponsoring for a future serious provider. --Connection (talk) 10:20, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Full Preview filter

It used to be possible to filter searches for Full Preview. This is no longer the case. Perhaps this should be added? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.61.206.251 (talk) 05:03, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

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  1. ^ Google Library Partners
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