Still More Problems with Google Books

I have written before about Google Books. (See http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2006/10/full_text_genea.html.) This is a great online resource for genealogists. Thousands of old genealogy and local history books are available to you free of charge. You can download and save them on your hard drive, then re-use them time and again as you wish.

Some readers have found problems with the online books, however.

The books are scanned using a robotic book scanner. Books are placed into the machine by a human operator and scanned at a rate of 1,000 pages per hour. Sadly, it appears that no one checks the pages. Many pages are skipped and not scanned as the robotic page turner apparently allows some pages to "stick together." Other pages are simply unreadable.

Even worse, Google does not provide any mechanism for readers to report errors or missing pages; or to obtain the missing words or pages.

Google Books is a great service but still new and with a few growing pains. Let's hope it improves as Google gains more experience.

Comments

[B. R. McNamara]

I'd reckon it's a lost-cause to expect Google to respond to inquiries about missing pages or unreadable data because any old book would be a pile of pulp after a machine moving that fast got done with it! What a tragic end to potentially fabulous volumes...

[Terri]

I went in to look for a genealogy subject, found a book and found my way to this notice at Google books:

I spotted a problem with one of your pages. Whom do I tell?

We carefully check the pages we scan, but occasionally errors do sneak through. To report an error, please visit the “About this book” page and click the link marked "Provide Feedback" at the bottom of the page. Then just fill out the form with some information describing the issue you’ve found. We appreciate your help and will do our best to resolve it

I followed the instructions and found a form to fill out regarding problems, including unreadability, since there is a space for comments it seems any problem could be voiced.

[Charee Harvey]

I am new to the Blog. Would someone give me the address to the genealogy books that are downloadable and freebies?

[Lee Hoffman]

Hmm! While not defending Google Books nor saying that 1,000 pages per hour is too fast for turning pages in a book, I still wonder at the implication that 1,000 pages turned in one hour will be hard on a book. By my mental calculations (with a little help from a pocket calculator), 1,000 pages per hour translates to one page being turn every three to four seconds. Reversing the calculations, a page turn every four seconds is about 15 per minutes times 60 minutes gives 900 page turns per hour.

This seems to me to be very close to the speed at which a human can turn pages. In this case, of course, the human would not see very much on a page -- a work or two at best or the existence to a graphic and the general idea of what the graphic portrays. As for a machine doing this, I would presume that the scanning part of the operation is done during the time that the mechanism is transversing the book for the next page turn. All that is needed is about one second and there is plenty of time for that.

Am I wrong, Dick?

Lee

[Dick Eastman]

Your math is correct, Lee. I have seen one of these book scanners in action at a convention. I don't know if it is the same model that Google uses or not, but it was billed as scanning 1,000 pages an hour. It turns pages slower than I do when I am perusing a book looking for something. As you said, it turned one page every few seconds. I don't see that it harmed the book in any way. I wouldn't put a particularly rare book through it but it should suffice for 99% of the books that genealogists use.

- Dick

[Dick Eastman]

---> Would someone give me the address to the genealogy books that are downloadable and freebies?

http://books.google.com

[Mary Beth Figgins]

The challenge that I had with Google Books was when issues of a magazine or a multi-volume set was scanned. There is/was no indication of what volume/issue the reference was from. It doesn't help much to know that a name was mentioned somewhere in a monthly or quarterly magazine that has been around for 10-20 years. Or on page 350 in a set that has a new volume every year. I did give Google this feedback

[wundercapo]

Thanks for highlighting the possible errors in Google Books. I am actually in the process of doing a research paper on what sorts of errors occur and at what rate (I'm a librarian) and their implications for research and libraries. If any of the readers of your blog would like to email me with specific titles and the problems they have seen (in addition to providing feedback to Google, as per the procedure posted by Terri), I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
wundercapo@gmail.com

James

[Luther Olson]

---> Would someone give me the address to the genealogy books that are downloadable and freebies?

http://books.google.com (entry above)

One might add: type "genealogy" in the search box.
Click on "All Books", which is the default
I just tried it and hit 226,600 books

I think the point is that one still does a specific search on a topic of interest, just like searching the internet. Or another way of looking at it--we are now searching for a topic in books rather than a topic on the web. For this reason, I don't see much point in downloading entire books or even entire pages.

When I saw that I wanted a book, I went over to the books stores, clicked on Amazon, and got a used copy (but never opened--perfect condition) for $5.00.

Luther

[wundercapo]

Luther wrote: "For this reason, I don't see much point in downloading entire books or even entire pages."

I think the issue with blurred or missing pages mostly concerns books that might not be so easy to find a used copy of. These include rare and old texts. They might be available, but for a high price.

The other, perhaps bigger, issue is with findability. If it appears a certain book is on Google Books, and yet a page is missing or blurred (and can't be OCR'd), and therefore words on it don't come up in a search, one might assume the book does not contain whatever words one was looking for. Perhaps now that doesn't make a big difference, but as the volume of scanned books increases, not finding that will be equivalent to the book not having it.

So, you would never have been able to go to a Amazon or a bookstore to buy the book, because it would not have come up on your search.

It may seem like a small thing, but it could be huge.

[Stephen Benham]

Google Book Search (Full View Books) returns the first 482 hits out of 935 hits on my surname. Is there any way of getting at hits 483-935?