Google Books: “…a mishmash wrapped in a muddle wrapped in a mess…”

Posted on | September 15, 2009 | 3 Comments

In all the Sturm und Drang over the attempt at world domination by Google Books, is it possible that the cries of torment from publishers and authors are causing us to miss a much more critical issue wrapped up in this breathtaking bid to digitize the world’s store of books?

I wrote back in December of last year about a piece by Marc Pesce on The Alexandrine Dilemma. Amongst a number of important and related issues, Marc spoke of the ever-greater need for solid and authoritative library science in this age of information deluge. He wrote:

Google seems to have abandoned – or ignored – library science in its own book project. I can’t tell you why this is, I can only tell you that it looks very foolish and naïve. It may be that Google’s army of PhDs do not include many library scientists. Otherwise why would you have made such a beginner’s mistake? It smells of an amateur effort from a firm which is not known for amateurism.

Now, Petter Næss, on his Knowbodies blog, has pointed to a very interesting presentation – Google Books: the metadata mess – (and an article – Google’s Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars) from Geoff Nunberg, of UC Berkeley’s School of Information. The titles say it all, really: his examples of the sheer sloppiness of much of Google’s metadata are more than a little worrying.

Check these offerings from Marc and Geoff out and decide, not whether Google Books is a threat to publishers and authors – for that is not the most critical question – but whether Google Books, as it is currently being managed, is a threat to the scholarly coherence and value of what could well become the greatest digital repository of them all.

Postscript – Dan Colman has added his thoughts on this issue on the Open Culture blog:

The problem comes down to this: The average person will be able to “google” the digital library (”When was the Franco-Prussian War?”) and find useful information. But scholars will run into problems when they try to ask more finely tuned questions. (”When did the word happiness start to replace the word felicity in the English language?) And that’s because Google’s metadata is a “train wreck: a mishmash wrapped in a muddle wrapped in a mess.”

Technorati Tags: marc pesce, library science, Petter Næss, geoff nunberg

Category: authority, books, content, knowledge, search, technology

Comments

3 Responses to “Google Books: “…a mishmash wrapped in a muddle wrapped in a mess…””

Jenny Luca
September 20th, 2009 @ 11:22 am

This is exactly my concern John. Once again, the Library profession has missed the boat. The whole thing sounds like it’s going to be disasterous, especially when you consider that Google has the monopoly on this digital repository. As is said in the articles you reference, they have a headstart that means it is unlikely any other consortium will be able to match what they have already achieved. The lack of foresight in ensuring the metadata is extensive and accurate is an oversight that will not bode society well.
Polprav
October 15th, 2009 @ 9:59 pm

Hello from Russia!
Can I quote a post in your blog with the link to you?
John Connell
October 15th, 2009 @ 10:05 pm

Of course you can – absolutely no problem!
John