Internet News

Legal Situation with Google Books

Divide and Conquer: Update on the Google Books Lawsuit by George H. Pike, Newsbreaks (Feb 2012)

Google has been engaged in legal action concerning Google Books and the digitization projects for 7 years. George Pike brings us to the present as Google tries to defang the class action suit by the Authors' Guild and photographs by seeking a dismissal.

Much of this would go away if copyright law were changed.

"Of course, the best solution would be for changes in the copyright law to reflect the technological changes and social benefit that the Google book database unquestionably provides. The orphan works problem continues to loom; it inhibits not only Google but also any other organization that wants to digitize and make available any information that is copyrighted but does not have an identifiable owner. Millions of documents, photographs, works of music, and media items representing an extensive cultural and historical heritage exist in this netherworld, possessed by libraries and archives but limited to their dusty shelves."

We get an update on Europeana too - and its use of a registry for holding information about orphan works.

3 Cheers for Google Books

3 Reasons We Hope Google Books Gets Better, Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb (Dec 21)

Google Books - we, who do not have Kindles and other readers, hope it thrives. Not mentioned in this article is because you can search across the content - not just find a title.

It does describe the Ngram reader where you can search on terms and see their occurence over time in books - and narrow to the books.

Lawsuit against Google Books

Class Action Filed in Google Books Case , George H Pike, Newsbreaks (Dec 19)

This case against Google for its digitization of books never went away - in fact it just got worse.

"The long- delayed lawsuit over the Google Book project took a significant step toward court action and potentially farther away from a settlement with the filing of a motion for Class Certification by The Authors Guild and several individual authors. With the filing, the authors are asking the court to move the case forward as a class action lawsuit, with the guild and authors representing a class of thousands or more individual authors. This could increase the possibility of significant damages against Google if they are found to have infringed on the authors’ copyrights. Google is expected to oppose the motion to certify the class and is also expected to ask the court to dismiss the case outright."

US Universities proposing to digitize orphan works

Orphan Works Project to Scan Library Books for Online Database , George H Pike, Newsbreaks (Sept 12)

Orphan works - out-of-print books for which copyright owner cannot be identified or located - pose serious problems to digitizing projects. Google has already been blocked from digitizing these even though it proposed a system for creating a subscription database. Will academic libraries succeed on the basis of fair use?

"The University of Michigan Library and several other major academic libraries are partnering with the HathiTrust Digital Library to try and do what Google cannot: develop a searchable library of scanned books, including so-called “orphan works,” from the resources in the libraries’ existing print collections. This Orphan Works Project could result in digital access to millions of out-of-print books, but it also runs a risk of violating federal copyright laws."

Internet Archive Canada - shoestring cut

Toronto online book archive forced to fire 75% of staff, Toronto Star (Jul 8)

Needed - one million dollars.

" Internet Archive Canada, a small non-profit company, fired 35 of its 47 employees on Wednesday due to a massive drop in donations. Most will leave Aug. 12 unless a white knight appears soon. "

Who knew?

This was run on seventh floor of Robarts Library at the University of Toronto. There were 18 scanners, each manned by an operator, run 16 hours a day in two shifts.

It has digitized 350,000 books since 2008 (some of which I have used in some investigation into history of Toronto). Output will drop from 1,500 books / week to 250.

Google to scan British Library from 18th and 19th centuries

Google to scan 250,000 old British Library books, Digital Media (Jun 20)

Google has a new agreement to scan 250,000 books from the British Library from 1700 to 1870. "The digitized books will be available free online through Google Books and the British Library site. Readers will be able to view, copy, and share the text for non-commercial uses."

Getting book recommendations

Book Recommendation Services , Paula Hane, Newsbreaks (May 2)

Many leads in this article on resources for reviews of books and recommendations other than the very well known Amazon service. There are also some Facebook apps.

Google Books Settlement Rejected in US Court

Google Books Settlement Proposal Rejected By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News via PCWorld (Mar 22)

Google lost another round on its proposed settlement with authors and publishers for digitizing content.

Judge Denny Chin from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York wrote - "The settlement would grant Google "significant rights to exploit entire books, without permission from copyright owners. Indeed, the [settlement] would grant Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case." "

Google Books' Ngram Viewer - Must Try

Google has given us a a new, fun tool for looking at the occurrence of words - this time through the books Google has indexed. It's Google's Books Ngram Viewer - where you can graph one word or phrase against another to see occurrence in books over time. Google Books is accessing 5.2 million of its indexed books - 500 billion words. People who create concordances will be over the moon.

Below is the screenshot of internet vs world wide web.

Mostly of interest is the blip in the use of the word internet from 1900 to 1910.

Using the books available for preview, we do a very early mention of the idea of Internet in the Official Gazette from the NPO in the US in 1902 - "electronic interconnection through the Internet to be known as RPWEB."

Other occurrences of internet are mismatches to words like internat., intersec, tutemet, interest and several others. But this is still a Google Labs experiment. They may be able to refine the quality of the matching. It does make us question the slope of the curve though.

It's also interesting to just look through Google Books for occurrence of a word in the title over a period of time - such as Internet in the title from 1960 to 1990 - to see what was being published before the Internet became widely used.

See New Visualization Tool—Google Books Ngram Viewer, Newsbreaks (Dec 20)

Google's Ngram Viewer: A time machine for wordplay, Lance Whitney, Digital Media (Dec 17)

Postscript

When OCR Goes Bad: Google’s Ngram Viewer & The F-Word, Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Dec 19)

Danny Sullivan points out that there can be errors in optical character recognition (OCR) in scanning documents - which will explain the errors in the search for internet. He did a search on that word also.

He also points to an article that says Google’s word engine isn’t ready for prime time from The Binder Blog. It's back to the old problem that Google doesn't do metadata well - and this really shows in Book search and Scholar search.

Biodiversity Heritage Library

The Biodiversity Heritage Library Adds Records to WorldCat, OCLC, Newsbreaks (Nov 29)

Another reason to use OCLC Worldcat - it has added over 14,000 records from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, "the world’s largest repository of full-text digitized legacy biodiversity literature".

"The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a consortium of major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries, and research institutions organized to digitize, serve, and preserve the legacy literature of biodiversity. BHL is the scanning and digitization component of the Encyclopedia of Life (http://www.eol.org/), a global effort to assemble information on all living species known to science into one ever-expanding, trusted, web-based resource."

The Biodiversity Heritage Library website itself is very easy to browse and search and now connects to Worldcat to help you find the book in a library nearby.

Rich Results in Google Book Search

"Rich Results" From Google Book Search Continue To Roll-Out, Resource Shelf (Nov 4)

Google must use a different algorithm for searching for books, if for the obvious reason that books aren't linked to each other.

An article in The Atlantic tipped off Research Buzz that Google can sometimes identify that you want a particular item and will show a Rich Result. The links show examples.

Reading Kindle Samples

Amazon launches Kindle for the Web, by David Carnoy, Crave (Sept 28)

View samples of Kindle books on the Web.

" Kindle for the Web is more geared to driving readers to buy the full e-books (and perhaps paper books), which reside on Amazon. Authors and publishers will undoubtedly see this as a viral marketing tool."

More information at Amazon's Free Kindle Reading Apps

As you browse books at Amazon, watch for notice about being available in Kindle - then install the Kindle reading app on your PC (there are other devices - iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android) to read the sample.

Using Google Book Search in Many Ways

10 Ways to Use Google Books for Lifelong Learning and Research, by Saikat Basu, Makeuseof (Jun. 7th, 2010)

You can't print or save the text at Google Books (unless it's public domain) but you can collect, search in several ways, share, and spend a lot of time. Get details from article.

Implications and issues of Google Book Digitization

5 Ways The Google Book Settlement Will Change The Future of Reading, Annalee Newitz, IO9 (Apr 2)

Very good article about the conundrum of Google Book Search - has all the issues - and seems to end positively. There are problems, they can be sorted, and in the end we will have "economically-sustainable openness in the stacks"

"The Google Book Settlement could easily be the twenty-first century's most important shift in how we deal with copyright in the world of publishing. To understand it, you need a little back story on the previous giant shift in copyright law, which happened about twelve years ago."

The Open Access Text Archive

Internet Archive Hits Two Million Books, ResearchBuzz (Apr 1)

Not a joke - Internet Archive has 2 million free digital texts. Browse from http://www.archive.org/details/texts - and pick up your summer reading.

How to find a book

How To Find A Book Without Knowing The Title Or Author by Saikat Basu, makeuseof.com (Aug 31, 2009)

Has tools and tips for finding books online starting with a search at Google. Mentions several book search services. Also recommends using question-and-answer sites - such as Yahoo Answers - someone might answer your question.

Counting Books

Google Book Search Settlement: Updating the Numbers, Part 1, Fred Von Lohman, Electric Frontier Foundation (Feb 19)

This article has numbers about Google Books culled from various documents lately presented over Google Book Settlement agreement.

+ "Google's Dan Clancy estimates that Google has scanned 12 million books so far, which includes 2 million scanned through its Partner Program, another 2 million public domain works, and foreign works that are outside the amended settlement."

+ Of the 42 million books in Google' partner libraries, "Google estimates that 10 million books are subject to the terms of the amended settlement."

+ Total number of books in the world - 174 million.

Google Books Case

Last words? Google Books to get final hearing, by Tom Krazit, Relevant Results (Feb 17)

Catch up on the Google Books case.

"Representatives from Google, groups representing authors and publishers, privacy advocates, and competitors will appear before Judge Denny Chin on Thursday in New York to argue--for possibly the last time--over whether Chin should approve Google's class action settlement with the authors and publishers over Google Book Search. If approved, the settlement would allow Google to display books with varying degrees of access, sell books directly from its site, and launch an institution subscription to its library of over 12 million books."

New at Google Books

Updated Books Home Page and My Library, Inside Google Books (Jan 27)

Google announced changes to Google Books

+ categories for books and magazines
+ My Library is on the home page - and you keep some bookshelves private
+ bookshelves seem to act like folders

Finding Books

50 Cool Search Engines for Serious Readers, Online Colleges (Jan 18)

Page lists "50 cool search engines for serious readers and students: e-books, buying and selling books, rare books, book reviews and discussion communities, libraries.

AddALL for Book Search

Metasearch eBooks With Addall, Research Buzz (Jan 7)

AddALL -- "searches over 30 ebook sites to find stuff for you to read. " Searches ebooks, in print, used books, magazines, music and movies.

Revised Google Book Settlement

Here We Go Again! The Revised Google Book Settlement by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Nov 23)

Barbara Quint finds that on closer examination, "the revised settlement seems to reveal that the changes from the original settlement are not as major as some coverage has indicated. Instead, the changes are meant more to clarify and/or render explicit policies, procedures, product features, and rightsholder options already in place."

But one of those clarifications is over foreign works - non US.

"Works not published in the U.S. must have been "published by January 5, 2009 and either were registered with the U.S. Copyright Office by that date or their place of publication was in Canada, the United Kingdom (‘UK'), or Australia.""

That could exclude about 50% of digitized books.

There will be a Books Rights Registry with a board of representatives from the author and publisher communities including author and publisher representatives from Australia, Canada, and the U.K.

As for money - "The revision also adds three potential new revenue models-print on demand, file download (formerly PDF download), and consumer subscription. These three new options join the institutional subscription model in the original settlement agreement. ."

Google Books and Orphaned Works

Google makes concessions on digital book deal , by Michael Liedke, AP via Globe and Mail (Nov 14)

Google filed a few concessions as the U.S. Justice Deparment reviews the proposed Google agreement with publishers and authors.

"Google Inc. is hoping to keep the deal alive with a series of new provisions. Among other things, the modified agreement provides more flexibility to offer discounts on electronic books and promises to make it easier for others to resell access to a digital index of books covered in the settlement.

Copyright holders also would have to give more explicit permission to sell digital book copies if another version is being sold anywhere else in the world."

Google Books: Scan First, Ask Questions Later, Douglas MacMillan, Tech Beat, Business Week (Nov 14)

Google Books Has A Lot of Books

Google Books - latest count - 10 million, with 2 million + in the public domain.

Source: Barbara Quint, Information Today

Google Magazine Search

Google Books gets browse magazine page, Pandia (Nov 8)

Now can search Google Books directly for the magazines - http://books.google.com/books?as_pt=MAGAZINES&rview=1

Pandia speculates -- "Our guess is that Google is preparing Google Books for an era where they will sell copies of magazines directly over the Web."

What's Next for Google Book Search?

Google Book Search Settlement: What Will Happen Now? by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (Sep 25)

Good question.

Refers to Google Books Settlement Delayed Indefinitely By Miguel Helft, NT Times

"As currently written, the controversial settlement between Google and groups representing publishers and authors is officially dead. On Thursday, a federal judge gave the parties time to negotiate a new deal that would address some of the many objections filed by various groups. "

DOJ on the GBS Settlement

DoJ Asks Court to Nix Google Book Search Settlement, by Ryan Singel, Wired (Sept 19)

The shoe dropped - "The Justice Department, citing anti-trust and copyright concerns, asked a federal court judge late Friday to reject a controversial settlement that would have allowed Google to cut through knotty copyright issues in order to create the library of the future".

Quoted --

The central difficulty that the Proposed Settlement seeks to overcome – the inaccessibility of many works due to the lack of clarity about copyright ownership and copyright status – is a matter of public, not merely private, concern. A global disposition of the rights to millions of copyrighted works is typically the kind of policy change implemented through legislation, not through a private judicial settlement. If such a significant (and potentially beneficial) policy change is to be made through the mechanism of a class action settlement (as opposed to legislation), the United States respectfully submits that this Court should undertake a particularly searching analysis to ensure [...] that the settlement is consistent with copyright law and antitrust law. As presently drafted, the Proposed Settlement does not meet the legal standards this Court must apply.

Concerns about Google Books

Google Books and the Judge, by Anthony Grafton, New Yorker (Sept 18)

Some doubts about the goodness of having Google Books as THE digital library are expressed here. There seems to be a growing argument against the Google juggernaut.

Meanwhile it does try to do "good". It has just announced the Espresso Book Machine - that Google "would allow On Demand Books to produce paperback versions of two million out-of-copyright digitized texts on the Espresso Book Machine, which can print and bind a book in less than five minutes" - for the price of a paperback.

Article points to some serious weaknesses in Google Books - inaccuracies, and lack of rigourous practices. Google is not a library working according to library principles.

Search Options for GBS

Discover Books and Magazines using Search Options , Inside Google Books (Sep 18)

Google Books has adopted Search Options to let users slice and dice. "For example, you can now search for only books or magazines or for only content that you can preview in Google Book". Only in the US.

More Opposition to Google Book Digitizing

Microsoft and Yahoo oppose Google book deal, ComputerWeekly (Sep 9)

Opposition to Google's digitizing agreements and plans is coming from all directions: France and Germany, now Yahoo and Microsoft, and many others.

"Although the deal will only cover US copyright interests, it will involve books published elsewhere and has raised concerns in Europe that it will affect international copyright law and give a US company control over online access to European learning."

Microsoft and Yahoo "on the grounds that it will create a monopoly that will drive up book prices and further boost the dominance of Google's search engine."

Also Google Books opposition pours in at deadline by Tom Krazit, Webware (Sep 8)

A Lot about Google Book Search

Everything you need to know about Google Book Search, Pandia (Sept 3)

Much has been written about Google's efforts to digitize books and make them searchable through Google Book Search. If you really intersted in this, Pandia will point you to the Google Book Search Bibliography by Charles W Bailey's Jr., and some introductory articles done by Pandia itself.

Google Book Search Quality

Google Book Search? Try Google Library by Tom Krazit, CNet (Aug 27)

Librarians, academics, and privacy advocates gathered at the University of California at Berkeley to discuss the implications of Google's proposed settlement with publishers.

Krazit summarizes the main issues and concerns: privacy of use, access, quality.

Does point out that GBS quality is "laughable" in places and that it is unusable for serious research.

"Universities do have an alternative in the HathiTrust, a digital library project that counts UC Berkeley and the University of Michigan--also a close partner of Google's--among its partners. That service lacks the scope of what Google is potentially entitled to scan, but it curates the material in a fashion that's better suited to the needs of the academic community."

Open Book Alliance is opposing Google's settlement. More on that in Open Book Alliance to oppose Google Book deal

"The Open Book Alliance, a consortium that includes nonprofit author groups, library institutions, and Google rivals Amazon, Microsoft, and Yahoo, launched Wednesday to "insist that any mass book digitization and distribution effort be open and competitive."

Authors and the Google Book Search Settlement

An author's guide to the Google Books flap by Tom Krazit, CNet (Sept 1)

Authors should probably pay attention to the Google Book Search Settlement. Google will have checked with publishers for books in print, but for books out of print authors can have some input into how it is displayed and can get some compensation.

"How do I know if I'm affected by this settlement? -- If you've written a book since 1923 that was published in the U.S., you're probably eligible if you hold the copyright license (some "for-hire" authors cede this to publishers, such as with multi-author technical manuals and the like). Check with your publisher to be sure, but note the settlement only covers books published on or before January 5, 2009."

Google Digitization Saga

More questions than answers on Google Books by Tom Krazit, Cnet (Aug 29)

Controversy about Google's work to digitize books never dies down. This article reviews the recent developments and has some figures. Basically - everyone agrees that a searchable digital library is good, and they have to concede that Google is the only one with the resources, but many don't trust Google.

"Google, however, has already scanned more than 10 million books. At the moment, it's not allowed to display more than a few snippets of copyright-protected books for which it doesn't have an explicit agreement with the rights holders. If the settlement is approved, Google will suddenly flip a switch and offer full-text searches of those books, as well as links to bookstores."

Google EBooks

Google Books Offers Downloads in EPUB Format, Newsbreaks (Aug 31)

"Google Books (http://books.google.com) is now offering downloads in EPUB format, a free and open industry standard for electronic books. It's supported by a wide variety of applications, so once you download a book, you'll be able to read it on any device or through any reading application that supports the format."

Google Book Search in Europe?

Report: Google near Book Search deal in France by Tom Krazit, Webware (Aug 18)

"France's La Tribune reported Tuesday (spotted by The Times Online) that the Bibliotheque Nationale de France has all but given up on its own attempt to create a digital library in partnership with other European countries, paving the way for Google Book Search to get a foothold on the continent."

Creative Commons in Google Book Search

Google Books to add Creative Commons books, AP via Business Week (Aug 14)

"Google Inc. is now enabling authors and publishers who release their work under Creative Commons licenses to distribute it through Google Books, a free service that allows users to search and read books online."

Google Book Search

Buslib-L posting by David Dillard brought attention to The Public Index wiki - "a site to study and discuss the proposed Google Book Search settlement. "

"The Public Index is a project of the Public-Interest Book Search Initiative and the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School. We are a group of professors, students, and volunteers who believe that the Google Book Search lawsuit and settlement deserve a full, careful, and thoughtful public discussion. The Public Index is a site for people from all points of view to learn from each other about the settlement and join together to make their voices heard in the public debate."

Dillard also mentioned his site - Meet the Googles - a website created through Google Sites - with "subject guides links to a great deal of information about each Google search tool including Google Books and a large body of information in quite a number of posts on Net-Gold about Google Books and the other Google search tools."

Scollbar at Google Book Search

New Ways to Search Within a Book, Inside Google Book Search (July 2)

When you search inside the book (limited preview or full view), GBS will show a small guide in the scrollbar - mouseover to get a preview of the the next mention of your terms and jump to that section. Saves on eyestrain.

Google Book Search - Status of settlement

Update on the Google Book Settlement by Paula J. Hane, Newsbreaks (July 2)

Antitrust, privacy, access, authors' rights - many issues continue to delay acceptance of the Google Book Search settlement.

Clouds at Google Book Search

Google Book Search Now With Cloud Tag by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Jul 1)

"The Google Book Search Blog announced a neat new feature that allows you to peek into the book via what is known as a cloud tag. The cloud tag shows you the most common terms and phrases used in the book, with the bigger the terms, the more that term is used in the book."

Better Google Books Search

New Features on Google Books, Inside Google Book Search (Jun 18)

Many improvements:

+ embed preview of book in blog or website
+ search results that show more context
+ thumbnail view
+ contents dropdown for easier navigation
+ plain text view - good for text-to-speech
+ page turn button and animation
+ more information on book overview page

WorldCat Identities

WorldCat.org has greatly improved its display of information about books. A new piece is in incorporating WorldCat Identities to the results. These are profiles on authors or contributors. Run your search, select a book title, and look for the section on Details - click on Find More Information About.

For example, Margaret Atwood.

The Go button takes you to a WorldCat Identity for Harold Bloom.

If you want the identity to be of Margaret Atwood herself, use Advanced Search to search on author = margaret atwood. Then select a book title from the page, and proceed as above.

See WorldCat Blog - Who's your favorite WorldCat Identity? for short video.

Internet Archive Book Reader

New Archive Book Reader, Open Content Alliance

Internet Archive has a new reader interface for its books. Details are in the posting. To just try it on your own, go to the book’s details page 9such as this one for Libraries of the Future) and, in the “View the Book” box, on the left, click on the “Read online” link or the animated gif.

New Features at Google Book Search

Google Book Search Adds Seven New Features by Gary Price, Search Engine Land (June 18)

There are seven new features to Google Book Search:

1. embed preview material from Google Book Search on your own page
2. improved display of results
3. thumbnail view feature of multiple pages
4. drop-down menu for exploring book
5. plain-text view
6. page turning
7. more information about the book on the Overview page

Resistance to Google Book Search Settlement

Google's digital book future hangs in the balance, by Stephen Shankland, Webware (June 15)

Google Book Search continues to encounter resistance - this time from the US Department of Justice which is continuing with its antitrust probe.

"The settlement [with authors and publishers], if approved, could neatly cut a Gordian knot of copyright entanglements though setting Google back $125 million. That's because it would enable Google not only to display books that are out of copyright and those that are in print by cooperating publishers, as it does today, but also those from the vast collection of in-copyright brooks that are out of print--even when those holding rights to those books didn't specifically agree to Google's plan. "

There is a revenue stream - "... the company also stands to make money directly from book search. Under the proposed settlement, Google could share revenue with authors and publishers from sales of PDF copies of books, from fees from institutional subscriptions granting access to its online library, and from advertising. "

Under the settlement, those with rights to books must opt out of the settlement rather than Google seeking explicit permission. Orphan works would be a large part of this - works where the author can't be located.

This gives Google the advantage - "The settlement would grant Google rights to use those works, but competitors--Microsoft, Amazon, or the Internet Archive are all real possibilities--without their own handy class-action settlement would be have to try to seek such permission in advance from each rightsholder or risk copyright infringement litigation. "

Who will get what? - "Google keeps 37 percent of revenue from online book sales, advertising, and subscriptions; the not-for-profit registry would take a portion of the remainder for operating costs and distribute the rest to the rights holders."

What's the problem? Monopoly power. "The settlement creates a fundamental change in the digital world by consolidating power in the hands of one company," said Harvard professor and author Robert Darnton.

James Grimmelman of the New York Law School wanred that, "It creates two new entities--the Books Rights Registry Leviathan and the Google Book Search Behemoth--with dangerously concentrated power over the publishing industry. Left unchecked, they could trample on consumers in any number of ways."

But Google has the technology and there is no one else doing this. Microsoft dropped out, Amazon does commercial, and Internet Archive does out-of-copyright and hasn't had the force to do more.

Some Libraries support Google's Book Search Plans

Michigan Libraries Support Google Book Search Settlement Plans, by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (May 26)

Michigan libraries sign on to Google Book settlement. Note - GBS at over 8 million books now.

"Librarians seem caught in ambivalence these days about Google Book Search (http://books.google.com), the beyond-mammoth book digitization project currently rolling up to (or past) 8 million books. The next major event in the project's history-the court's approval or disapproval of Google's settlement terms with authors and publishers over copyright issues-will decide whether millions more of those books will become available to all or part of the public. The American Library Association and the Association of Research Libraries have already sent a "hot/cold," "yes/no," "go, but carefully" recommendation to the court. However, the University of Michigan Libraries-one of the first and always the most generous and supportive of the Google Book Search Library Partners-has already made its approval clear by signing a contract that presumes the settlement agreement will go through as planned. In that agreement, however, the university has addressed some of the concerns expressed by librarians, which could set a standard for future agreements and allay concerns between librarians and mighty Google."

Libraries File Concerns about Google Book Search

Libraries Ask Judge to Monitor Google Books Settlement by Miguel Heft, New York Times (May 4)

Describes concerns and actions of groups in the US with Google's agreement with publishers and authors to digitize books. American Library Association, Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries are pressing judicial oversight of the agreement to ensure Google doesn't take advantage of its monopoly in this to heavily charge libraries and that it protects the privacy of the readers.

Opposition to Google Book Search

Library associations have raised concerns about Google's Book Search:

Library groups gripe about Google Book Search by Stephen Shankland, Webware

"Specifically, the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the Association of Research Libraries expressed some affinity for Google's mission of sharing books with the public, but raised concerns in a legal filing that the settlement would concentrate power in Google's hands and poses pricing and privacy concerns. "

Patent reveals Google's book-scanning advantage by (May 4)

Describes the system Google uses with two cameras and infrared light to scan the books.

Google's Book Search Challenged

U.S. looks into legality of Google books deal by Diane Bartz, Reuters via Globe and Mail (Apr 29)

Google's proposed settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers is being challenged by the US Justice Department.

"Google agreed to pay $125-million (U.S.) to create a Book Rights Registry, where authors and publishers can register works and receive compensation from institutional subscriptions or book sales.

Google's plan is to let readers to search through millions of copyrighted books online, browse passages and purchase copies.

But the deal also would allow Google – and only Google – to digitize so-called orphan works, which has raised some eyebrows in antitrust circles. Orphan works are books or other materials that are still covered by U.S. copyright law, but it is not clear who owns the rights to them."

Google Librarian Newsletter on Books

Google Librarian Central has re-awakened after a 6 month hiatus.

"A lot’s happened since our last newsletter went out. In our "Features" section, we have several updates on Google Book Search, including the recent settlement of the lawsuit brought on by the AAP and the Author's Guild as well as the launch of Google Book Search on mobile phones. We also wanted to tell you about the addition of several new types of content on Google properties - from magazines and news archives to millions of historic images from the Time/Life collection."

It's a long read.

About #AmazonFail

Amazonfail: How Metadata and Sex Broke the Amazon Book Search by Avi Rappoport, Information Today (April 20, 2009 )

An amazing tale about how books disappeared from Amazon's listings over Easter weekend.

"The event now known as #AmazonFail involves a great cast of characters-books, metadata, sex, search results, traditionally disenfranchised groups, a possible hacker, the Kindle, the absence of institutional response, and the emergence of Twitter for sharing information very quickly on a massive scale."

It's mix of technology, process, and people and above all system - and systems become unstable. There's a moral tale here too --

"This is a telling example of the importance of diversity in information sources. Amazon could, at any time, remove or subtly hide information on any topic, from open source software to gay romance. It certainly will not be stocking any books about how to disable the digital rights management (DRM) on the Kindle! Any single source is likely to be flawed, limited by the assumptions of the people who created the system and the content."

Objections to Google Book Search

Academics, Citing Public Interest, Plan To Intervene in Google Book Search Settlement, Norman Oder, Library Journal (Apr 6)

"While much mainstream news coverage of the pending Google Book Search settlement has focused on the potential boon to researchers, concerns raised by librarians and consumers have begun to hit critical mass. One sign was a front-page article in the April 4 New York Times, headlined Google’s Plan for Out-of-Print Books Is Challenged, which noted that two sets of academics plan to intervene in the settlement.."

Goggle Book Search: Popular Passages and Key Idea

Exploring Connections Between Books in Google Book Search by SEO by the Sea (Feb 28)

Google Book Search has a Popular Passages search that I never noticed.

This shows up on the "About this book" page - sometimes. For example, this book about science fiction writers - Voices for the Future - has quotes passages from the writers - and Google shows where else those quotations occur.

Back to the SEO article, Bill Slawski writes:

"What’s interesting about the Popular Passages Book Search feature is the ability to create links between documents based upon passages that are shared between them, in a very large collection of documents that don’t contain links to each other.

An addition to this feature looks at the text of those passages, and a certain amount of words after them to identify key terms that co-occur within the context of those passages, so that the passages and the books they are contained within can be searched by those “Key Ideas.”"

I'm not certain that Google Books is showing those "key ideas" right now, but the searchers can spot some on their own.

Reminder that Google Book Search has several interesting features - these were listed in the posting.

* Reviews of books listed,
* References from web pages and other books and scholarly works,
* Links to other editions of the same book and to related books,
* A list of the “key terms” that appear in the book with links to where they show up, and;
* A Google Map to places mentioned in the books.

Books on Mobile

Google Books Search Goes Mobile, by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Feb 5)

Never be stuck without a dictionary, an encyclopedia, the works of a business guru, the works of any organization at all, or reading material at any time thanks to Google Books Search on mobile.

"The Google Books Blog announced they have now created a mobile version of Google Books. If you have an iPhone or Android phone just navigate your mobile browser to http://books.google.com/m to start using Google Book search on your mobile device."

Posting has screen shots.

Also Google to put 1.5 million books in your pocket, Matt Hartley, Globe and Mail (Feb 5)

"Still, mobile users will only have access to a fraction of Google's rapidly expanding digital library to start: Google has already digitized more than 7 million books through its Google Book Search service. Most of the titles have passed into the public domain, but some are still under copyright. The collection includes the works of William Shakespeare, John Milton, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens."

Globe Books

Book reviews published in the Globe and Mail since 2000 are now available for free through Globe Books

Search by keyword, title, or author (of the book - not the reviewer).

While you're there, take in the multimedia section, GlobeBooks blog, book reviews from other papers, and much else.

Concerns about Google Book Search

Will Google Book Search Help Or Hurt Libraries And Book Sales? by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (Jan 5)

Summarizes and comments on an article in the New York Times - Google Hopes to Open a Trove of Little-Seen Books by Motoko Rich (Jan 4)

Of interest - Google is recording how Book Search is used. For example, "Users are already taking advantage of out-of-print books that have been scanned and are available for free download. Mr. Clancy was monitoring search queries recently when one for “concrete fountain molds” caught his attention. The search turned up a digital version of an obscure 1910 book, and the user had spent four hours perusing 350 pages of it."

Some people worry how this will affect reading habits - "Some scholars worry that Google users are more likely to search for narrow information than to read at length. “I have to say that I think pedagogically and in terms of the advancement of scholarship, I have a concern that people will be encouraged to use books in this very fragmentary way,” said Alice Prochaska, university librarian at Yale."

Magazines in Google Book Search

“Hundreds of Titles,” “Dozens of Publishers”—Magazines Going Into Google Book Search by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Dec 18)

Barbara Quint manages to get more information about the magazines being included in Google Book Search, although Google, as always, will not provide a list of titles.

"However, the articles will carry a "Magazine" tag, which users can search in the Advanced Search mode. Magazines will come into Google Book Search (http://books.google.com) from the Publisher partner side of the service rather than from Library partners, with Google offering free digitization. Some of the magazine content in Google Book Search will come from other Google interfaces (e.g., Google News Archive) and some from the main Google service (e.g., TIME magazine)."

+ will see articles in full colour
+ can browse through an issue
+ limit to a specific magazine by using the ISSN
+ GBS also has journals from its digitization of library bound periodicals. These are treated as Google Scholar items. They will not be marked as magazines.

This is quite the endeavour that will have some effect on Google.com as well. There is more to come. Read the article to get all the details.

Google Book Search adds Magazine Search

Google Book Search Puts Magazines Online, by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Dec 9)

Google strikes again - this time to add 10 magazines including Popular Science, Ebony, Jet - with more to come.

For example, search on Sinclair computer - should get results from Popular Science.

As usual, Google does not provide a list, but it has changed the Advanced Search page at Google Book Search to offer content options: All, Books, Magazines. Later, magazines articles will be available through the Google News Archive.

As Danny Sullivan summarized - "First Google digitized books, then newspapers, then historic Time-Life photos and now — magazines. Today through Google Book Search, people can search the full-text of millions of articles from more than 10 magazine with hundreds more to come, the company has announced."

Google Library

The Google library, Los Angeles Times (Nov 10)

"Google, whose corporate ambition is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," has reached a breakthrough agreement with book publishers to make millions of out-of-print volumes accessible to the public. Unfortunately, it's not clear how useful the pact will be to libraries and their patrons. That's because the deal promotes a "pay to read" approach that's the antithesis of the free public library model."

Pandia about Google's Book Deal

Why Google’s book deal is such a big deal, Pandia (Nov 3)

'Pandia argues that Google’s deal with US publishers and authors may lead to a new revolution in book dissemination — one that can be compared to the importance of the printing press."

That's quite the statement - but if the agreement receives court approval - there will be more content from out of print books, more ways to buy and download, subscriptions by universities to the digital content - and more.

Pandia write - "This is the goal of Google: To make printed material as easily available as web pages and online PDF files. That will indeed represent a third revolutionary step for literature dissemination. Anyone, anywhere, can immediately find and read the content of books relevant to their interests."

I've already found this to be true. Doing research with access to Google Books and putting them into myLibrary is a godsend. With these agreements, it could easily get better.

Google Book Search Settlement

The Google Book Search Settlement: ‘The Devil’s in the Details’ by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Nov 3)

Barbara Quint has the full story on Google's agreement with writers publishers for Google Books.

Some figures:

+ Google Books has 7 million digitized books
+ 20,000 publishers provided 1 million of those books
+ public domain 1 million
+ 4 to 5 million in-copyright

What the public will see

+ "Preview views, similar to the blocks of contextual displays offered for much of the publisher partner content and encompassing as much as 10%–20% of content or 4–5 page displays, would become the default display for books in-copyright but out-of-print."

+ "Books that were in-copyright but in-print could receive the same preview treatment, but only if the publisher or author rightsholder approved."

Arrangements for institutional access by universities. Different still for public library with dedicated computer.

There is much more detail in the article for those who have a vital interest in the settlement.

Access Digitization - Books

Mass book digitization: The deeper story of Google Books and the Open Content Alliance by Kalev Leetaru, First Monday (Oct 6, 2008)

"Abstract
The Google Books and Open Content Alliance (OCA) initiatives have become the poster children of the access digitization revolution. With their sights firmly set on creating digital copies of millions upon millions of books and making them available to the world for free, the two projects have captured the popular imagination. Yet, such scale comes at a price, and certain sacrifices must be made to achieve this volume. With its greater visibility, most studies have focused on Google Books, addressing limitations of its image and metadata quality. Yet, there has been surprisingly little comparative work of the two endeavors, exploring the relationship between these two peers and their deeper similarities, rather than their obvious surface differences. While the academic community has lauded OCA’s “open” model and condemned the proprietary Google, all is not always as it seems. Upon delving deeper into the underpinnings of both projects, we find Google achieves greater transparency in many regards, while OCA’s operational reality is more proprietary than often thought. Further, significant concerns are raised about the long–term sustainability of the OCA rights model, its metadata management, and its transparency that must be addressed as OCA moves forward."

Google Book Preview Wizard

Search Inside the Google Book With the Google Book Search Preview Wizard by Barbara Quint. Newbreaks (Sept 29)

"The new Preview Wizard (http://code.google.com/apis/books) from Google installs a set of customizable software tools embedding book information from the Google Book Search Index. Any website, such as those from publishers, retailers, authors, libraries, reader social networks, etc., can link to displays of the same Google Preview information on books as would be seen from a direct search of Google Book Search. In the case of public domain books from the library partner side of Google Book Search, this also means a link to downloadable full-text copies."

Shelfari for books

Amazon Buys Social Network For Book Lovers By Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek (Aug 26)

"Shelfari is a nearly 2-year-old social networking Web site in which users build virtual bookshelves of the book titles they've owned or read."

Amazon invested a million dollars in 2007, and has now bought it for an undisclosed amount. "Shelfari chief executive and co-founder Josh Hug said in the company blog that the acquisition would enable the small company to create "innovative new tools.""

AbeBooks Bought

Amazon Expands ‘Traditional’ Book Business With Acquisition of AbeBooks by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Aug 14)

"Canada-based AbeBooks (www.abebooks.com) represents an online inventory of more than 110 million used, rare, and out-of-print books from about 13,000 independent booksellers worldwide. The recently announced acquisition of AbeBooks by Amazon is expected to close by the end of the year."

Google Monopoly?

Could Google Monopolize Human Knowledge? By GREGORY M. LAMB, ABC News (Jul 12)

"As Microsoft Backs Away From Digitizing Old Texts, Some Worry One Source Could Privatize It All"

""I wouldn't say Google is 100 percent of the digital book world, but it's getting near 90 percent," says Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian and media scholar at the University of Virginia, who writes a blog called "The Googlization of Everything.""

Google Librarian Central

Google Librarian Central - July 2008

I thought Google's Librarian Central had died - but it has been revived with this July 2008 newsletter. Blog has been closed but a newsletter to be emailed lives on. (Odd choice).

"To that end, we have decided to close the Librarian Central blog and instead provide interesting news, product features, and other Google-related announcements through the Google Librarian Newsletter every few months."

Note - every few months.

This issue has segments on Book Search, Google Sky, Google Health (where you can store your medical records - yikes!), and Best of Inside Google Book Search.

What - no Google Scholar? What about Google Trends? And personalizing news? And creating custom search engines? Librarians are interested in more than books and sky, and are sceptical enough to be aware of privacy issues in Google Health. Google - you can do better than this.

10 Book Search Engines

Top 10 Book Search Engines By Wendy Boswell, WebSearch About.com (Jul 5)

Websearch at About.com has a new look to it - and a new article on book-search engines. Nice selection of search engines to use when you are looking to a book. Of course, Amazon and Google Book Search also let you sample many of the books.

Copyright renewal on books

1923–1963: Google Book Search Targeting More Books for Public Domain? by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (June 26)

Could they make copyright anymore complex? 1923 is the cut off year for public domain. Books published between 1923 and 1968 might not be in copyright if the holder did not renew at the 28th year.

"Under the copyright law in force during that period, copyright holders had to renew their registrations in the 28th year after publication, equivalent to 1951 to 1991. If they failed to renew, then the copyright lapsed and the material could be considered public domain. Or not. When it comes to copyright law"

So Google created a copyright renewal database from records at the Copyright Office that, one would suppose, lists book where copyright was renewed. But it isn't that simple.

But Google's objective is to expand the public domain collection in Google Book Search beyond 1923. "According to a Google spokesperson’s message, "These records will enable us to put more books into full view on Google Book Search, furthering us toward our goal to make books accessible to users while still respecting copyright. We’re committed to clarifying the public domain status of books and making as many books available online to users as possible.""

Google Product Search has Books

Google Decides Books Have Consumer Intent, Puts Them Into Product Search by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Jun 18)

"Google Operating System reports that Google has integrated Google Book Search directly into Google Product Search. That means, when you search for a book in Google Product Search, you might find a link to "Preview this book on Google Book Search" and also "Related Books" in a tab below."

Microsoft's Digitization Work

Two articles by Barbara Quint in Newsbreaks about Microsoft closing Academic Live and Live Books.

Microsoft Shuts Down Two of Its Google ‘Wannabe’s’: Live Search Books and Live Search Academic

Shut down will affect the OCA project headed by Brewster Kahle.

"Kahle feels that the announcement was a "wake up call. The idea of a couple of corporations owning the history of intellectual discourse is a bad idea. That should be the job of libraries and publishers, not one corporation." To Kahle, navigation and hosting of content should be distinct functions in order to guarantee the widest distribution of content. One of the reasons Microsoft pulled out of the OCA a year after it started was to guarantee that Live Search would host the masses of books they committed to digitizing. The OCA has a firm policy of opening all its content to all search engines, even Google. Kahle’s primary quarrel with Google Book Search lies in its confining access to Google searchers."

Of interest: "Tom Turvey, director of Google Book Search partnerships, reports that it has more than 20,000 publisher partners supplying well over a million books to the Google Book Search collection."

"It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over’: Impact of the Microsoft Shutdown

Many of Microsoft's digitizing project will continue for a while. It's not a complete stop - yet.

"Although the announcement and some press coverage of Microsoft’s decision to shut down its Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects seemed to indicate that the program would cease digitizing immediately, conversations with participating libraries indicated otherwise. For example, according to an article in the May 29 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, librarians at Cornell University expect to see tens of thousands of more books to be digitized by Microsoft before the program ends later this summer. Cornell also has an agreement announced in August 2007 to digitize a half million books through Google Book Search."

Google's BookShelf

Google’s Virtual Bookshelf Plans? SEObytheSea (June 4)

Some people are using Google's personal bookshelf.

"There are a number of virtual bookshelf sites online, many with social networking features added to them, that do. I recently explored a few of them, and here are some of the ones that I came across:"

There's good potential for social networking - especially among librarians.

Google Carrying On with Book Search

Google Still Gung-ho on Book Search By Clint Boulton, EWeek (May 29)

Google says it is committed to book search -- "With more than 28 library partners and 10,000 publisher partners worldwide, in the not-too-distant future, extraordinary collections will be available to all via a comprehensive index, every word of which is searchable by anyone on Earth, in any language."

Personalization may be the direction:

"The company last September launched its My Library feature, which allows users to create a customized online library that can be shared with others.

Users organize and annotate digital book collections and share them with friends through a URL or as an iGoogle gadget. There is also a clip-sharing feature."

GBS for Crafts

Getting crafty with Google Book Search at Inside Google Book Search (May 27)

Video showing how an hobbyist crafter in Oregon uses Google Book Search to get older material on needlework crafts. Video might be slow to load, but is quite enjoyable.

OCLC - Google Book Search

OCLC Tightens Links to Google Book Search by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (May 22)

OCLC is forming much stronger ties with Google Book Search - ties that will include MARC records on Google's book search digitized content (where available), links to Google Book records (the page cover), use of Google's book records in the library's OPAC, and perhaps ultimately full-text search

Bottom line: "All the books coming into Google Book Search from library partners will be linked through WorldCat, including public domain books available for downloading."

Best sentence: "Though its partnership with Google has clearly proved fruitful, with orchards yet to come, OCLC is not limiting itself to this one garden."

Google Books Viewability

Google Books Reaches Out With New API by Michael LoPresti, Information Today (Mar 20)

"... Google announced the release of a new application programming interface (API) for the service that enables external websites to connect directly to any of the texts in the Google Book Search index. Google Book Search is a tool that searches the full text of books that are scanned, rendered searchable, and stored by Google in its digital database. Books Viewability, as the API is called (http://code.google.com/apis/books), gives web developers the ability, through a set of software protocols, to locate titles on Google Book Search and automatically embed links to those books on their own sites."

Google Buy This Book

From the mail bag: Where can I get this book? Inside Google Blog Search (Feb 7)

Explains that Google will show the publisher as a source for buying a book it has a scanned.

Book Reviews at Amazon

Who Is Grady Harp? Amazon's Top Reviewers and the fate of the literary amateur. by Garth Risk Hallberg, Slate (Jan 22)

Who is really writing those book reviews at Amazon? Author Garth Risk Hallberg checked out who gave his book such a five-star rave review and found that Grady Harp had been solicited by his publicist.

"As I explored the murky understory of Amazon's reviewer rankings, however, I came to see the real Web 2.0 as a tangle of hidden agendas—one in which the disinterested amateur may be an endangered species."

Using the ISBN

OCLC Hooks Up With Wikipedia ResearchBuzz (Dec 8)

Here's a partnership - Worldcat.org has a service that allows you to enter an ISBN and get related ISBNs. It's called WorldCat xISBN - and once you have the related ISBNs you can check for entries on Wikipedia. Check Researchbuzz to see how to do this exactly.

TVC Alert has a comment too -- Librarians: Mixing OCLC and Wikipedia -- "formula also works for the new 13-digit ISBN."

Overview to Book Search

Toward a Universal Library by Reid Goldsborough, LinkUp Digital (Dec 1)

Short article about "doing research with books." Mainly describes what Google is doing with Google Book Search with some small mention of Open Content Alliance.

Debate about Google Digitization

Debate Over Putting Books Online Heats Up TVC Alert (Nov 26)

"Ars Technica draws attention to an increasingly heated debate between University of Michigan librarian, Paul Courant, and media law professor Siva Vaidhyanathan. In a nutshell, Courant contends that the library's book-scanning deal with Google is not a violation of copyright law. Such deals further address the public's short-sightedness when it comes to finding information that isn't available online."

Provides a series of links that show the debate.

Book Scanning

NY Times, Book Scanning, and Lots of Resources ResourceShelf (Oct 22)

"Bottom Line: Book scanning involves many more projects than the ones that get a lot of the attention" - there are more digitization projects going on than you would ever want to count. Fortunately Gary Price does it for us.

Live Search Books and the British Library

Progress Report: The British Library and Microsoft Digitization Partnership by Jim Ashling, Information Today (Nov 1)

"The BL/Microsoft project is designed to digitize 25 million pages of 100,000 out-of-copyright titles from the BL collection related to 19th-century literature. Access will be provided via Microsoft’s Live Search Books site (http://books.live.com) and the BL’s Web site (www.bl.uk). Live Search Books now includes many partners: The University of California Libraries, Cornell University Library, the University of Toronto Library, The New York Public Library, and the American Museum of Veterinary Medicine have all joined, as well as more than 50 publishers."

3 Book Search Engines

Resources: Book Search, People Search TVC Alert (Nov 2)

People: Spock.com - "beta search engine crawls and indexes information about people."

Books: Booksearch - a meta-book-search engine; A9 for Amazon, Live Search Books.

Digitization and Hype

Future Reading - Digitization and its discontents . by Anthony Grafton, New Yorker (Nov 5)

Examines where we are going with digitized texts - will it be a world with everything at the finger tips (and probably impossible to find), or one that is fragemented and mixed? Grafton says it won't be the "universal library", but instead a "series of new information ecologies".

Google’s projects, together with rival initiatives by Microsoft and Amazon, have elicited millenarian prophecies about the possibilities of digitized knowledge and the end of the book as we know it. Last year, Kevin Kelly, the self-styled “senior maverick” of Wired, predicted, in a piece in the Times, that “all the books in the world” would “become a single liquid fabric of interconnected words and ideas.” The user of the electronic library would be able to bring together “all texts—past and present, multilingual—on a particular subject,” and, by doing so, gain “a clearer sense of what we as a civilization, a species, do know and don’t know.” Others have evoked even more utopian prospects, such as a universal archive that will contain not only all books and articles but all documents anywhere—the basis for a total history of the human race.

In fact, the Internet will not bring us a universal library, much less an encyclopedic record of human experience. None of the firms now engaged in digitization projects claim that it will create anything of the kind. The hype and rhetoric make it hard to grasp what Google and Microsoft and their partner libraries are actually doing. We have clearly reached a new point in the history of text production. On many fronts, traditional periodicals and books are making way for blogs and other electronic formats. But magazines and books still sell a lot of copies. The rush to digitize the written record is one of a number of critical moments in the long saga of our drive to accumulate, store, and retrieve information efficiently. It will result not in the infotopia that the prophets conjure up but in one in a long series of new information ecologies, all of them challenging, in which readers, writers, and producers of text have learned to survive.

Grafton takes us through the historical stages of information and its organization to our present day of digitization.

+ history of printing
+ search and retrieval
+ digitization era
+ digitization projects by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Open Content

Open Content Alliance

The Politics of Book Search: Some Research Libraries Decline to Offer Books to Microsoft, Google by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (Oct 22)

Google Books and Microsoft Live Books ask for exclusivity when they strike an arrangement with a research library to digitize their books. Libraries are balking at this and turning to Open Content Alliance.

"Institutions participating in the Open Content Alliance, however, must pay the cost of scanning their libraries themselves. That's the one catch. But, as the article points out, some will do that to prevent their information from being controlled by commercial organizations and potentially used for commercial gain, if only indirectly."

Bookmarklet for Amazon Books

Simple Amazon Searching — Surface Search, Research Buzz (Aug 22)

Use Tara Calishain's bookmarklet for searching title at Amazon Books.