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October 2, 2007

Better Search: Libraries or Engines?

The Engines win by a landslide, at least according to current college students.

They preferred searching on Google or Yahoo versus their college library systems, based on the attributes of: speed (90%); convenience (84%); ease of use (87%); cost-effectiveness (71%); and reliability (63%). Libraries, however, won on more trustworthy measures including credibility (77%) and accuracy (76%).

While students prefer library sources, they also heavily count on the engines. Over half (53%) say the results from engines are as trustworthy as libraries. Google, Yahoo and Ask all rank about the same, without much differentiation.

And, as for those people sitting behind the library desk, here's your wake-up call. It turns out that over two-thirds (67%) of students believe that librarians performed either the same as or worse than the engines. Even though librarians were valued and considered helpful, they apparently don’t compare to indices and algorithms.

Interestingly, the survey sponsor is OCLC, a library services organization best known for its worldwide catalog which helps libraries make their holdings more searchable and available to patrons. They contacted several hundred students last year to determine their views on libraries, and recently made the results accessible online.

Of course, the major engines already acknowledge the importance of libraries and their holdings. We see this playing out in myriad initiatives underway, ranging from Google's Scholar and Books efforts to Microsoft's think-tank gatherings.

Libraries are still filled with treasure troves, holding everything from special collections to rich databases. Years ago, librarians made progress in providing electronic islands for their patrons. Now, their challenge is to make the holdings as searchable as possible -- following their "self-service" patrons into the larger search ecosystems.

Posted by debbyr at 3:12 PM | Permalink

July 18, 2007

Speak Softly And Carry A Big Stick

So who is quietly trying to solve your search and discovery problem? Librarians. This week, a new searching mechanism was announced by the OpenLibrary project, with the audacious goal of providing information about every book on the planet. No ordinary catalog here, as OpenLibrary relies on the considered librarianship of everyone who uses or contributes to it.

As usual, librarians are experimenting with access, resources and usability. We’re happy to follow their lead. In this case, it’s digital librarian and archivist Brewster Kahle, who started the Wayback Machine and has been thinking about open access for years. Yet almost no one heard about this effort, and it’s pretty interesting!

Lately, we have seen some mainstream publicity about librarians and their quiet influence. The NYTimes has focused on them in recent weeks -- from announcing the impending death of Dewey Decimal to declaring librarians as hipsters. Say what you will about this recent spate of publicity, but these book lovers are notoriously bad at marketing themselves. There are some web sites which aim to help, however, such as Librarian and I Love Libraries.

Librarians have always represented the “uber class” of searchers. They may not tout their achievements as prominently as the pure tech crowd, but they have been pushing web access since before it was even remotely hip. Looking for recommendations, links or more? Your local librarian has probably spent more time unearthing truly meaningful resources than the average techie. It’s too bad that we can’t bottle their vast experience and create the most expert results out there -- or maybe there is a way of tapping into their search sorcery.

Ask any student working through a term paper and you’ll find that librarians are a welcome influence when the going gets tough. For those of you who graduated over a decade ago, you’d be amazed at how academic and public libraries have transformed into electronic wonders, open 24/7. Too bad we are blocked from so many of these restricted or deep-web resources.

Where can outsiders see the good stuff? That’s always more challenging. It’s often helpful to follow the trails behind librarians. We’re familiar with Gary Price, from Ask, who also co-manages the excellent ResourceShelf site. Another influential librarian in our search world is Mary Ellen Bates, who offers tips to help her fellow info pros get their bearings. We’re also interested in whatever the American Library Association (ALA) provides, like these monthly recommendations.

Whether individually or collectively, these expert librarians are trying to be helpful. We wish they would speak a little louder -- and be heard amidst the overall search cacophony.

Posted by debbyr at 3:25 AM | Permalink

October 12, 2006

University of Wisconsin-Madison Joins Google Book Search Project

University of Wisconsin-Madison is the next university to join Google's Book Search Project. The University has one of the largest collections of historical documents and books in the US, accounting for about 7.2 million holdings. The University houses the famous Wisconsin Historical Society Library which is also part of this project. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has their release here and Google has their release here and Reuters has their article here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:35 AM | Permalink

September 13, 2006

Google: Banning Books In The US Is Bad; Censorship In China, Not So Much

Google's blogging (and here) about how it is supporting the 25th anniversary of the American Library Association's Banned Book Week by posting information about novels that have been challenged or banned from being in libraries within the United States. That's great, but it also rings hollow given Google's support of wide-spread censorship in China.

Consider some of the quotes the ALA has put out to promote its anti-banning campaign:

"Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment." —Library Bill of Rights

"We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources." —ALA Code of Ethics

Google's a library resource, make no doubt about it. Pick a librarian, and they'll tell you Google is a key resource they use. Not the only resource, but an important one -- and one that I doubt they feel should be censored to the degree that Google does in China.

Back to Google's support of Banned Book Week, its new Explore Banned Books page has links to information about 42 classic books that have been banned or challenged over time. Here's a recent article on banned books in China.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:36 AM | Permalink

September 12, 2006

Shakespeare Searched By Clusty

If it's September it must be Shakespeare. Clusty has released Shakespeare Searched which is designed to provide quick access to the works of the Bard. It's not designed as a replacement for, or access to the full text of his work, but as a quick reference resource. The concept is that it can be used to identify who made a specific speech, which work contains which quotes or even individual words, and also helps draw out specific themes in individual works or across the entire corpus.

It doesn't provide analysis or commentary, just direct access to the text via Vivisimo. Consequently it's useful for teachers who can use it to create lesson plans, and it's helpful for students not only as a quick reference guide but also, because of the clustering aspect, as a means of suggesting ideas for topic papers.

As you would expect, the strength of the resource is in the underlying approach that Clusty uses to return results. A search for 'isle' for example returns 39 results. The main body of the screen provides access to the text in which the keyword or phrase is used, the play/act/scene that it is from, and the speaking character. There is an option to additionally display surrounding text, but this is usually limited to the previous line of text from the last character to speak. However, since the surrounding text is already quite generous this isn't too much of an issue.

The real power of the resource however lies in the clustering. Again, to use my 'isle' search topics such as King, God, and Warlike Isle are displayed. Clicking on the latter of these the searcher is rewarded with 3 results that put that phrase into context. Somewhat disappointingly the results do not appear to be returned in any obvious fashion, as we get a reference to Othello Act 2 Scene 3, then Henry VI Part 2 Act 1 Scene 1 and then back to Othello Act 2 Scene 1. This leads to a rather confusing display and slightly mitigates against its value as a quick reference tool.

However, the clustering approach does not simply stop at concepts or topics. A second tab allows the searcher to view references to the search term by play (arranged alphabetically by title) which does overcome some of my earlier criticism. A final tab allows me to see which characters have uttered the word 'isle' and to pull up the appropriate part of the text.

The search interface also allows users to search for terms in individual works (and Clusty also includes the Sonnets) so it's easy to quickly identify the John of Gaunt speech in Richard II that refers to "isle". There are two pull down menus for works and for characters. The menu for the works is obvious, but it's the menu for characters that is remarkable, since it lists every single character in every single play, and believe me - there are a lot of them. Irritatingly though we have to guess which play the characters are from, which isn't so bad in the case of Hamlet, but it's going to take a skilled reader to identify which play "First Goth" or "Second Page" come from! (Titus Andronicus and Ask you like it in case you're wondering.)

All's well that ends well, although not quite - there are some drawbacks to the service which are slightly irritating. The search interface is very precise. My search for "sceptered isle" produced no results, and neither did "scepterd isle" - but "scepter'd isle" did get the result I was expecting. A search for '"feared" gives 3 results, while "fear'd" returns 46 results. While this is a small point I think that it's a very important one since Shakespearian English is not always as obvious as we might hope. I would have preferred to have seen a reference to 'did you mean?', or an option to automatically word stem, or a clustering of similar words.

Those criticisms apart however, it's an extremely useful resource, and one that should prove to be instantly popular. However, given that there are a lot of other Shakespearian resources out there, how does it rank with some of those? It would of course be unfair to try a direct comparison, since they are all trying to do something slightly different, but several of them do offer the ability to search within the confines of the texts themselves.

Explore Shakespeare with Google offers us the complete plays at our fingertips with the option of downloading many of them (although this depends on where you're geographically located) or purchasing them. It is possible to search within individual plays, but it's first necessary to know which play you want - a limitation that doesn't exist with the Clusty version. However, the information provided by Google is limited to no more than a few words either search of the search word, so it is necessary to follow the link to read directly from the page. Google's approach, while useful in some circumstances, does not provide the breadth or flexibility of use that we find with the Clusty offering.

The Library of the Internet Shakespeare Editions is rather different again, focusing on reviews and academic works about the plays. It does have a search option for the text, although this hasn't worked when I've looked at the site myself so I'm rather limited in my ability to compare resources!

The complete works are also available thanks to MIT but there is no real pretence at providing any kind of search functionality; the only way this would be possible would be to view the entire play on one page and use a search function from within your browser to find the text required.

The Oxford Shakespeare provides searchers with the 1914 Oxford edition, which is searchable. My "isle" search did only return 27 results however, rather less than Clusty. Confusingly the results are arranged in the order of Act, Scene, and then the name of the play, with a reasonable amount of surrounding text. My "sceptered isle" query also caused problems, with entirely different results for variations of spelling. While being a useful resource overall, in terms of searchability and flexibility I would have to say that the Clusty offering wins hands down.

The Collected Works of Shakespeare is also available in a rather less polished format from a student at the School of Information Technologies, University of Sydney. This time my search produced 37 results and the context within which the term could be found was displayed on screen in a basic format. Interestingly however, it was something of a pleasant delight to discover that this resource was capable of proximity searching (and it was possible to specify the degree of proximity as well). Searches could also be limited to specific plays as well. This was probably the closest in terms of functionality to the Clusty resource, but again having a different focus, so direct comparison would be unfair.

There are of course other resources available, and this isn't intended to be an exhaustive summary of them; merely to put Clusty's 'Shakespeare Searched' into some context. None of them were able to exhibit the same flexibility and functionality, and with the arrival of this resource I think that learning Shakespeare just got a whole lot easier.

Posted by Phil Bradley at 9:37 AM | Permalink

August 30, 2006

Download Books For Free From Google Book Search

Google is now offering free, downloadable versions of public domain books that you can find in Google Book search. Unfortunately, there's no way to browse through a directory of books that are available. However, you can keyword search for them easily, sort of.

On the Google Book Search home page, you'll see two options below the search box. By default, "All books" is filled in. Change this to "Full view books." Now search for something you are interested in, Dante's Inferno, an example both the AP and Bloomberg cite in stories about the new feature.

When the results appear, click on one of the books that comes up, such as this one. Over on the right-hand side, in the column just below the title, you should see a "Download" button. That will let you download the book in PDF format.

Here's the problem. Some Full View books are full view for reading online but not for download, and Google doesn't make it easy to narrow in on only the downloadable ones. For example, here's a search for mars. Here's the first book listed. No downloadable option is offered.

Since Google seems to be making downloadable versions of anything that's out of copyright -- and since those are books published before 1923 in the US -- you might try an advanced search for books before that date.

For instance, here's a search for all books about Mars for the years 0 through 1922 (FYI, I did try to search for books older than 0 AD, but the system doesn't support negative/BC dates, as far as I can tell).

Overall, this is a nice feature to have. Next time I'm heading on a trip, I might try downloading some PDF books to read for the journey. But that leads me to improvements I want to make it easier to find good books:

Give me a Google Zeitgeist for book search, or something like Google Music Trends. I want to know what people are reading via Google Book Search. What's the most downloaded book and so on, especially in different categories?
Provide a "Downloadable Books" search option, in addition to Full View, so I know I'm absolutely only going to get back results that match what I'm looking for.
Give me better ranking of downloadable books. Somehow I think there are much better popular interest books that could be coming up tops for a search on [mars] than I was finding in my example above.

Looking for more info? From Google's help pages, Why is the Download button only available on some books? explains that only public domain books get the download option right now, and even some of those have yet to be enabled.

How can I find books that I can download? explains briefly what I've already covered in more depth above, but that might expand over time.

What is a public domain work? explains what books Google considers to be in the public domain.

Google's not the only place offering electronic, downloadable books. Project Gutenberg is probably the best known long-standing site already doing this, and you can see some of the top titles here, similar to what I hope Google will do in the future.

That's also a handy way to see if Google offers some of the most popular titles that Project Gutenberg does. So far, the answer is no. I took this top ten list from Project Gutenberg:

I did quick searches using the Full View option along with the titles and author names. I couldn't find any of them available at Google for download.

Gary Price has also written about ebrary in the past that offers books for purchase and, I believe, some limited downloads for free. Last month, he also wrote of the World eBook Fair making 300,000 titles available for download. World eBook Library still offers links to these works, but you have to pay $9 per year for access to them. Wow, look at all those sci-fi books from Baen, including the alternative history work 1633 (I thought 1632 was great, 1633 OK and 1634, ugh!).

Watch ResourceShelf, as Gary's sure to post on alternatives to find downloadable books when he gets going later today. In the meantime, back when he was with us, his More Sources For Ebooks & Electronic Text post has a lot of resources you'll still find useful.

Google's also still apparently pondering sales of in-copyright works, with publisher permission, something that was floated by the company as an idea earlier this year. Amazon's also got similar plans in the works, but I don't recall seeing that having launched yet, despite its announcement nearly a year ago.

Finally, Google's also just offered a way for anyone to put a Google Book Search box on their site. Now you can add Google Book Search to your site from the official Google Book Search blog has more, as does this instruction page.

Postscript: For more resources on downloading books, see Gary Price's story here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:07 AM | Permalink

August 22, 2006

LibreDigital Warehouse Competes With Google Book Search

Steve Bryant reports that "publishers fight back against Google," with their own book search service. The new service is named LibreDigital Warehouse and was announced by HarperCollins and LibreDigital the other day. This new service will give "publishers and booksellers the ability to deliver searchable book content on their own Web sites." The technology empowers publishers to define rules on a partner and book title level, defining which pages are viewable, which pages are not, and what percentage of the pages are available. They will begin offer about 200 HarperCollins titles and increase that to 10,000 titles or so. More details on the service at eWeek.com.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:09 AM | Permalink

August 2, 2006

Google Negotiating With University Of California On Book Search

UC May Join Google's Library Project from the Los Angeles Times covers news that Google may enter into an agreement with the University of California to scan library content for the Google Book Search service.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:58 PM | Permalink

June 14, 2006

Google's Complete Plays Of Shakespeare Less Than Compleat

The Google blog 'Inside Google Book Search' announced in No holds bard that it is now possible to explore Shakespeare with Google - The complete plays of Shakespeare now at your fingertips. Well no, not exactly. I've spent some time playing around with this resource and it's less than impressive for a number of reasons.

I decided to take a look at the full text of a couple of plays, but in common with Philipp Lenssen found that I couldn't actually see the full text. All that I got was a fairly brief page with some bibliographic data, an opportunity to buy the book and links to related information. I went through each section in turn and found that in total I could read 13 of the plays Google listed, but was unable to do so for another 24. This may be in part due to the fact that I'm in the UK, and as the Google blog comments in an update some versions of the plays are not in the public domain everywhere in the world, so we can only see snippets.

I simply do not believe that Google could not have found versions of the plays that are out of copyright, particularly as they are keen for us to have the complete plays at our fingertips. However, I'll let that pass. What I really find unforgivable is their section 'Other ways to explore Shakespeare'. This gives me options to look for more resources, take a scholarly perspective, connect with enthusiasts and so on. Clicking on any of these links runs a default search for 'shakespeare'. Consequently with most of these options I get a huge number of results, many of them inappropriate. A search just on 'shakespeare' is the kind of basic search that I'd expect a school child to do once. I find it amazing that someone at Google could not have come up with rather more interesting and complex searches to fully utilise the power of the search engine, not only to give us a good search result, but also to show us just what it can do.

The concept is a great one; full marks to Google for having a go at it. The result is very much less than perfect, and for Google to say that they're making Shakespeare more accessible is in my opinion boardering on disingenuous.

Posted by Phil Bradley at 11:02 PM | Permalink

Google's Complete Plays Of Shakespeare Less Than Compleat

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:02 PM | Permalink

Google's Complete Plays Of Shakespeare Less Than Compleat

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:02 PM | Permalink

Google's Complete Plays Of Shakespeare Less Than Compleat

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:02 PM | Permalink

June 9, 2006

Microsoft Expands Windows Live Book Search With Two Universities & Submission Service

Microsoft announced that the University of California and University of Toronto Libraries will be participating in the Windows Live Book Search program. Both the universities will be digitizing "primarily out-of-copyright books" for Microsoft. In addition, Microsoft plans on making it easier for publishers to submit content for inclusion in the Windows Live Book Search index. http://publisher.live.com/ will be expanded within a few weeks to accept submissions in both digital and printed form.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:13 AM | Permalink

Microsoft Expands Windows Live Book Search With Two Universities & Submission Service

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:13 AM | Permalink

Microsoft Expands Windows Live Book Search With Two Universities & Submission Service

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:13 AM | Permalink

Microsoft Expands Windows Live Book Search With Two Universities & Submission Service

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:13 AM | Permalink

May 23, 2006

New Amazon Online Reader For Digital Book Reading

Gary Price has a detailed & step-by-step write up on the new Amazon Online Reader. You can view the new look for the reader by clicking here. The new features include; search for words within the pages, scroll from page to page (looks AJAX like), and a zoom feature. More details at Gary and/or at Amazon.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:41 AM | Permalink

New Amazon Online Reader For Digital Book Reading

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:41 AM | Permalink

New Amazon Online Reader For Digital Book Reading

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:41 AM | Permalink

New Amazon Online Reader For Digital Book Reading

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:41 AM | Permalink

May 18, 2006

The New Online Library of Alexandria

Most of the information created prior to the advent of the web is still in printed form. Fortunately, a number of groups and companies around the world are busily scanning books, magazines and other printed content so that it can be accessed with search engines. Once this content is online, the possibilities for using and mashing up the content with other types of information are just about limitless—but current copyright laws may throw a huge wrench in the whole works. In today's SearchDay article, Building the Universal Library, I've done a "review" of a terrific new essay from Wired Magazine's "maverick editor" Kevin Kelly, which takes an extended, thoughtful look at many of the issues surrounding the creation and use of a Universal Library.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:32 AM | Permalink

The New Online Library of Alexandria

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:32 AM | Permalink

The New Online Library of Alexandria

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:32 AM | Permalink

The New Online Library of Alexandria

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:32 AM | Permalink

March 21, 2006

Congoo Offers (Free) Subscription Based Content For Free

Elinor Mills reports at News.com that Congoo released a search service enabling people to search newspapers, magazines and other periodicals that are typically fee-based subscription content. Currently, you need to run Internet Explorer on Windows for the downloadable toolbar to work, Firefox support is reportedly coming soon. The service gives you between 4 and 15 articles per month per publisher. If I may note that Gary Price blogged that this data and much more of it, is available for free via your library Web sites. For more information on accessing this information, read Gary's article named Finding Answers Beyond Web Search.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 2:53 PM | Permalink

Congoo Offers (Free) Subscription Based Content For Free

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 2:53 PM | Permalink

Congoo Offers (Free) Subscription Based Content For Free

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 2:53 PM | Permalink

Congoo Offers (Free) Subscription Based Content For Free

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 2:53 PM | Permalink

March 13, 2006

Google Partnering With Publishers To Sell Online Books

Google gave me the heads-up late Friday that a new feature allowing publishers to sell online versions of their books through Google Book Search was about to go live. Nothing was yet online when we talked, but that's since changed. A new help page, What does it mean to sell online access to my book?, explains that the program is the first in a series of revenue tools being rolled out for publishers.

The experiment will allow publishers to sell access to their books online, something Google hinted was coming back in November and January. Publishers set a price, then consumers can buy and read the book online. At the moment, the program supposedly will not allow copies of the book to be saved to a computer or pages to be printed ("copy pages") to be made. We'll see. So far, Google's existing protections limiting what users can see from books online have not been cracked, to my knowledge.

The program does not allow anyone but publishers in the US and UK who are voluntarily in the Google Books Partner Program to sell books online. Google also has book content that comes from its library scanning program. These books are not being sold. It bears stressing:

GOOGLE IS NOT SELLING BOOKS THAT IT HAS SCANNED FROM THE COMPLETELY SEPARATE GOOGLE LIBRARY PROGRAM.

Despite the capital letters and bolding, expect that many will begin saying that Google is now illegally selling books that it has scanned from libraries, just as many incorrectly say Google is reprinting scanned books online (they aren't). Some will do this out of misunderstanding. Some opposed to the library scanning program will do it on purpose, just to continue muddying the waters. To understand the myths and realities, please consider reading these past posts from me:

Want to start buying books now? Hang in there. Google told me that first they're getting publishers up and running, then at some undetermined point in the future, books available for sale will be offered.

John Battelle's got a very short note on the new page being up over here. As a sidenote, be sure to check out John Battelle's The Search and Google Book Search that John pointed at last week. In the interview, you can see how his publisher Penguin won't let books go into Google Book Search despite John wanting to be there. I like this part of the copyright page in his book:

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

Wow -- I didn't know the lawsuit over the library scanning program had been settled. Certainly it's fair use for anyone to copy, scan and do other things with pieces of the book without permission, depending on the various circumstances involved. Whether the entire book can be scanned for indexing purposes, rather than reprinting online, is what the lawsuit that Penguin and others are trying to discover.

By the way, distribution of the book "via any other means" is also mentioned. I wonder if every library that has a copy of the book got the publisher's permission to redistribute to their patrons. I'm guessing not. Expect libraries to be sued shortly.

Back to book selling, the Unofficial Google Weblog points to Google Offers Online Pay Plan from Publishers Weekly, which quotes Google talking about "perpetual access" to the books you buy, plus Google saying publishers will get the majority of the price charged, though Google itself will of course also cash in.

Threadwatch points at this blog post, which covers how publishers in the partner program got the news via email and citing one anonymously who is surprised/shocked that publishers are being asked to enroll without yet seeing what the money split will be exactly. Good point.

Information Week has news of publishers Taylor & Francis and Brill already signed up to sell through the service.

For more on Google Book Search, please see our Google: Book Search & Library category, if you are a Search Engine Watch member (and thank you, if so). You might also check out A Look Back as Google's Library Project Passes the One Year Mark.

Want to comment or discuss? Please visit our Google To Sell Online Books thread at our Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:53 AM | Permalink

Google Partnering With Publishers To Sell Online Books

GOOGLE IS NOT SELLING BOOKS THAT IT HAS SCANNED FROM THE COMPLETELY SEPARATE GOOGLE LIBRARY PROGRAM.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

Information Week has news of publishers Taylor & Francis and Brill already signed up to sell through the service.

Want to comment or discuss? Please visit our Google To Sell Online Books thread at our Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:53 AM | Permalink

Google Partnering With Publishers To Sell Online Books

GOOGLE IS NOT SELLING BOOKS THAT IT HAS SCANNED FROM THE COMPLETELY SEPARATE GOOGLE LIBRARY PROGRAM.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

Information Week has news of publishers Taylor & Francis and Brill already signed up to sell through the service.

Want to comment or discuss? Please visit our Google To Sell Online Books thread at our Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:53 AM | Permalink

Google Partnering With Publishers To Sell Online Books

GOOGLE IS NOT SELLING BOOKS THAT IT HAS SCANNED FROM THE COMPLETELY SEPARATE GOOGLE LIBRARY PROGRAM.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

Information Week has news of publishers Taylor & Francis and Brill already signed up to sell through the service.

Want to comment or discuss? Please visit our Google To Sell Online Books thread at our Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:53 AM | Permalink

January 10, 2006

How Does a Google eBook Store Sound?

So, what's next Google service going to be? According to this BBC News story, it just might be an online bookstore for ebooks. This idea was floated past reporters and other invited guests in a post keynote backstage press conference last Friday night.

From the article: Google has suggested it may consider setting up an online book store. Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporters at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that this would depend on permission from copyright holders.

We know that Amazon.com has plans to allow users to purchase online access and/or and download chapters or pages of books via their "Amazon Pages" and "Amazon Upgrade" programs that are set to launch sometime this year.

Actually, Amazon.com already offers some popular titles for downloading to Microsoft Reader. The Da Vinici Code is one example.

Microsoft also has their own ebookstore.

Google would also face competition from many other online ebook vendors and services. Browsing through the DigitalBookIndex and eBooklocator databases will give you an idea of what ebook content is already out there. You can find a list of other online and ebook sources here.

When I first learned about the Google Library program (not the same thing as Google Book Search for Publishers) I thought that once Google digitized a lot of this older, non-digitized content AND with then gain permission of copyright holders it would be a natural for them to sell it both electronically and/or offer a print-on-demand service. Perhaps, these comments from Schmidt are the first we're publicly hearing about the idea. Of course, now with the launch of Google Video Store, they're developing the business (Google Payment Corporation) and methods for online payment. Who knows? It seems that just about every there is talk/speculation about another new service from Google. Chris even joked yesterday that Google Doctor might be not far off.

Having manangement tossing out ideas, keeps people talking (Google speculation could be a full time job), buzz humming, and investors investing. This is as much a part of Google's brilliance as anything else.

You can read more about the backstage press event in this Endgadget report. A BBC interview with Eric Schmidt is also available.

Thanks to Science Library Pad for the news tip.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:21 PM | Permalink

How Does a Google eBook Store Sound?

Actually, Amazon.com already offers some popular titles for downloading to Microsoft Reader. The Da Vinici Code is one example.

Microsoft also has their own ebookstore.

You can read more about the backstage press event in this Endgadget report. A BBC interview with Eric Schmidt is also available.

Thanks to Science Library Pad for the news tip.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 1:21 PM | Permalink

How Does a Google eBook Store Sound?

Actually, Amazon.com already offers some popular titles for downloading to Microsoft Reader. The Da Vinici Code is one example.

Microsoft also has their own ebookstore.

You can read more about the backstage press event in this Endgadget report. A BBC interview with Eric Schmidt is also available.

Thanks to Science Library Pad for the news tip.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 1:21 PM | Permalink

How Does a Google eBook Store Sound?

Actually, Amazon.com already offers some popular titles for downloading to Microsoft Reader. The Da Vinici Code is one example.

Microsoft also has their own ebookstore.

You can read more about the backstage press event in this Endgadget report. A BBC interview with Eric Schmidt is also available.

Thanks to Science Library Pad for the news tip.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 1:21 PM | Permalink

January 6, 2006

Google Scholar and Medicine; Infotrieve's ArticleFinder Database is Now Free

A couple of items for web researchers.

First, Dean Giustini, a medical librarian at University of British Columbia in Vancouver (one of the most beautiful places I've ever been) and editor of the UBC Google Scholar Blog has a good summary of recent articles about how Google Scholar is being used in the medical profession.

Second, Infotrieve, a well-known name in the library world, has just announced that public access to their ArticleFinder database is now free.

What is ArticleFinder? It's a bibliographic database that also offers you the search, read abstracts and purchase individual journal articles as needed from a single source, this is what's often referred to as document delivery.

Content ArticleFinder has a lot of it. According to the web site, it's currently home to more than 26 million citations and eight million abstracts from over 54,000 journals, in science, technology and medicine (STM). More than 44,000 entries are added each week. This page has a breakdown of articles by discipline.

Search ArticleFinder offers two interfaces. One, a simple search box that can handle natural language and the other, an advanced interface that offers fielded searching (date, journal name, author, publisher, etc.). Another option allows you to narrow your search by discipline.

Fast Facts The ArticleFinder FAQ offers many more facts. One important note is that ArticleFinder does not search the full text of an article but rather the title and abstract. In terms of searching AF offers both wildcard search options as well as fuzzy searches. It's also possible to have your citations exported into one of three services and email results.

This service is more than worth a look.

Final Thoughts Two items. 1) The Infotrieve Virtual Library service (fee-based) allows a company or library to tie their e-journal holdings to he service. No word on if or when this feature will also become free. It would be great if did happen. 2) While much of the material in ArticleFinder is on the technical side of the aisle, don't forget that many public libraries offer great access (24x7x365) to thousands of full text article from journals and newspapers (licensed for personal use) for free without having to leave your home or office. More about that here.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:16 PM | Permalink

Google Scholar and Medicine; Infotrieve's ArticleFinder Database is Now Free

A couple of items for web researchers.

Second, Infotrieve, a well-known name in the library world, has just announced that public access to their ArticleFinder database is now free.

This service is more than worth a look.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 6:16 PM | Permalink

Google Scholar and Medicine; Infotrieve's ArticleFinder Database is Now Free

A couple of items for web researchers.

Second, Infotrieve, a well-known name in the library world, has just announced that public access to their ArticleFinder database is now free.

This service is more than worth a look.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 6:16 PM | Permalink

Google Scholar and Medicine; Infotrieve's ArticleFinder Database is Now Free

A couple of items for web researchers.

Second, Infotrieve, a well-known name in the library world, has just announced that public access to their ArticleFinder database is now free.

This service is more than worth a look.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 6:16 PM | Permalink

December 28, 2005

Google Book Search "Hack" Just Normal Operation

Steve Rubel thinks he's "hacked" Google Book Search, as he covers in his Read Most of O'Reilly's Hacks Books for Free Using Google post. In reality, I think he's just finding that Google Book Search operates exactly the way it is supposed to operate, to show you a percentage of a book that a publisher itself has allowed you to view online.

Steve describes reading books in O'Reilly's "Hack" series, such as Podcasting Hacks. He'll go to the table of contents, pick a hack he wants to read about, then is able to read an entire chapter covering the hack as the chapters are fairly short. If I understand right, he then goes back to the table of contents, finds another chapter, then reads that.

Scary sounding stuff, reading the entire book online like that! Actually, it turns out he can't read the entire book. The percentage he can read isn't so scary when you understand that a publisher is allowing it.

Once Again -- The Difference Between Google Print & Google Library covered this once before, on how publishers work with Google Book Search. Nevertheless, I'll do a short version and apply it to what Steve found.

Google Book Search takes in content in two different ways. There's the Google Library program, where they scan books. If the book is out of copyright, the entire content may be displayed. If it's in copyright, nothing is displayed other than small snippets. Then there's the entire separate Google Books Partner program. Publishers in that program, like O'Reilly, voluntarily submit their books. When they do this, they can also indicate how much of their books they want to have displayed, from 20 to 100 percent. If they don't want any of it viewable, then only snippets and no actual pages are shown.

In Steve's case, O'Reilly is in the partner program. You're told that at the top of the pages you view, where it says:

Provided by O'Reilly through the Google Books Partner Program.

Now remember that 70 percent figure Steve was talking about, that he could read about 70 percent of the hacks in any particular book? Sounds to me like O'Reilly's gone with a 70 percent viewable figure for its books.

You can see another mistaken assumption (or perhaps intentional twisting) of how Google Book Search works over at Google Watch. Scroll to the bottom of this page, which is against the library scanning program.

You'll see a graphic with the faces of Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin saying, "Hey boys and girls, write all your term papers using Google's snippets. No need to visit the library to find that copyrighted book."

The example used below the smiling faces of Larry and Sergey is a search on Steve Badrich, with this snippet shown:

Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at American State Universities in the Vietnam Era by Kenneth J Heineman - History - 1994 - 160 pages Page 134 - ... Steve Badrich, decided in March 1966 to enlist in the marines rather than spend two more anxious years at the university while his draft board made ... [ More results from this book ]

Below that is a screenshot of an actual page from the book, such as you'll see here at Google Book Search.

Conclusion? I think many will read that as an example of how Google Book Search is taking copyrighted books out of libraries and putting them online in a viewable format. But go up to the top of the page, and you'll see this:

Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at American State Universities in the Vietnam Era by Kenneth J Heineman - Provided by NYU Press through the Google Books Partner Program

In reality, this book wasn't scanned through the library program. It was put into Google Book Search by the publisher itself, NYU Press. And the reason those college "boys and girls" can view the page online is down to the publisher itself allowing this.

Gary looked earlier in Can Full Book Preview Prevention Be Hacked? at another mistaken assumption this year that someone had found a Google Book Search hole when in reality, it was the publisher allowing viewing.

Gary's post also covers the only single report (source material no longer online) I've ever seen about someone saying they found away around protections entirely. This was before Google had the required log-in system and used a wholly cookie-based on. Since that time, no honest-to-goodness hacking has come to light that I've seen.

I'm not saying it's impossible. It wouldn't surprise me if it happens. But that's not what Steve's done here. There's no "hole" that he's "hacked," as far as I can tell.

Postscript from Gary: I agree with all of Danny's comments. Two quick points. First, a recent post about Firefox add-on CustomizedGoogle says that they have a method that allows the printing of CustomizedGoogle pages. This would also make for some issues if the tool grew in popularity and people started printing thousands of pages. Second, if you're interested in reading and searching all of the O'Reilly books as well as tech books for many other major publishers including MS Press, Sams, Prentice-Hall and many more. I suggest taking a look at a service named Safari Tech Books, that just happens to be co-owned owned by O'Reilly. Yes, O'Reilly content everywhere. This service allows full text searching, fielded searching, printing, e-mailing, and more. As I've said many times in 2005, many libraries like the San Francisco Public Library offer access to this service for FREE! That