Google Books Essay

The Google Books see has been a functional progress ever since Google was created. The co-founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page had been working on a research reckon that was supported by the Stanford digital Library Technologies Project in 1996. Google intends to scan every h venerable up ever published and make all of the text searchable so that plenty can find the relevant information they need about book. They want to make books more getatable to the public and create an easy mechanism of sorting a books content and relevance to a subject.In 2002 a secret books project was launched and research was underway to identify the challenges that lay frontwards of them. Over this period, Googlers discovered a quick and harm free way to scan books and began to meet with Libraries to catch the digitalisation of books. In December 2004 Google announces the launch of the Google Print Library Project thanks to federal agencynerships from Harvard, The University of Michiga n, The New York open Library, Oxford and Stanford. Together it is said that these libraries exceed 15million volumes. In 2005 Google Print is renamed Google Books which is a more fitting ennoble as it better explains its use.With the launch of Google Books and its fast development many will argue of the advantages and disadvantages of the site. The whole project seems a little bit overly ambitious and it perspicuously has many flaws in its system. It is a seasonably do by to scan hundreds of millions of books and the pivotal question here is Are Google books doing it right? Scanning books is an extremely prison term consuming process so once Google books have d star it, it seems unlikely that the books will be rescanned. If few of the books be not scanned properly, important literature and information could become obscured or lost through the process of digitalization.Geoff Nunberg (2009) published an article Google books A Metadata Train Wreck and pointed out many errors i n the system. One utilisation being that he googled the name of an author and restricted the search to the works published originally their grade of birth. It was found that 182 hits came up for Charles Dickens alone. The Chief Engineer for Google Books, Dan Clancy claimed that the incorrect dates where the fault of the libraries. However, when the matter was investigated that it shows that the primary ten full read books published before 1812 and that mention CharlesDickens are correctly go out in the catalogues that they had come from. Although one can argue that the correct information is given on the title summon, there have been some other inexcusable errors too. Google Books has classified many of its books incorrectly and once once more Dan Clancy has claimed that both the libraries and publishers where to blame because the classifications were drawn from the BISAC codes that is given to booksellers. BISAC codes have only been around for about 20 historic period meani ng that any book that was put in the wrong category before this time is a fault of Google themselves.Google have decided to take on an extremely large project and it seems seeming that they are not doing it very well. They are quick to push the blame on others and the whole project is based more towards commercialism rather than to help make knowledge functional to the world. Project Gutenberg was one of the first digital libraries and was created by volunteers. This project seems to focus more on the importance of literature and the calibre of the books available are much greater than those on Google Books.The books are proof read by kind-hearted beings and their workers are not paid which is a clear sign that they actually care about do books more available to people. Google Books produces books in a much larger mass just now they should be sensible that people will value quality over quantity most. Google quickly scan these books and its obvious that they rarely check the m for errors. In Paul Duguids (2007) essay Inheritance and want? A outline Survey of Google Books, He addresses the Google books system hands on by using Laurence Sternes The Life and idea of Tristram Shandy as an example.He choose the first link that appeared in the search locomotive engine and claims his results were as follows The book he was examining did not start with the word wish meaning that the left hand status of the scallywag that had the word I was missing. On rascal seventeen the left hand side of the page is not legible because the gutter of the book is blocking the first few letters and by page twenty-seven, Sterne quoted Hamlets phrase alas, poor Yorick and inserted a black page of mourning. However the version that is on Google books has left out this page and is somewhat ignorant to the accompaniment of how iconic it is to the astute reader.On further investigation of Duguids essay I clicked on the links that were given to the book and put one acrossd th at it was no largeer a link to the book. I then searched Tristram Shandy just had Duguid had done into Google Books. I clicked on the first link which is the same Harvard edition that Duguid was referencing and discovered that the first page had the word I before wish and page seventeen was now fully legible. Although some corrections had been made the black page that was to follow on from page twenty seven has still not been inserted.This is perhaps due to the fact that the people scanning these books are not scholars themselves. It is very easy to recognise a page with a missing word or one that is not fully legible but many would mistake a black page as an error in printing. Another flaw in the digitalization in books is the actual book itself. There is something so pleasant about flicking through a book and holding it in your hand while you read. The book in its give physically is magnificent, depending on how old it is it could have been passed on from generation to generatio n.The book itself is a story in its own right. Throughout its sprightliness the book can acquire various annotations, signatures and other interesting characteristics. There has also been a masses of conflict with regard to the publishing industry and the digitalization of books. Google has offered to provide a search engine what they train to be every book ever published but for those which are copyrighted and cannot be viewed online, Google provides the preference to leveraging them online through sites such as Amazon or Barnes.In January 2007, Google held a conference on the future of the publishing industry. The conference quoted Charles Darwin and projected it on a screen It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor is it the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change. Toobin (2007) states in an article Googles Moon Shot As Laurence Kirschbaum, a long time publishing executive who recently became a literary agent, told me at the conference, Google is now the gatekeeper. They are attain an audience that we as publishers and authors are not reaching.It makes perfect sense to use the specificity of a search engine as a tool for selling books. This statement has a lot of truth because since the growth of technology, the popularity of books has locomote drastically. People in the 21st century care more for mindless television shows and tacky magazines than a good well written piece. Reading books challenges the mind and fuels the imagination and by incorporating literature with technology it is a great attempt to try and revive such an excellent thing. Despite Googles attempts, it looks as if they are not doing a good job.Many authors and publishers filed a lawsuit against Google Books claiming that Google has violated their copyrights by scanning the books, creating an electronic database and displaying short excerpts without their permission. The Authors Guild filed a lawsuit against Google Books alleging copyright infringem ent and after four years of word of honor a settlement was finally reached in 2009. It was decided that Google was allowed to copy, display and sell millions of books that were out of print but still in copyright. However the agreement was reviewed several times and was summarily rejected in shew 2011.This gave organizations a chance to voice their concern about the privacy insurance policy for users of the system. Google claims that it has reviewed its privacy policy and that an come out policy has been created for Google Books but it seemed that the policy still left a large number of gaps and something appeared to be kinda vague. On September 4th 2009 the electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) entered a motion to interact in the Google settlement case to help the readers of Google Books regarding their privacy online.EPIC states that readers will be required to part with particular information that will be stored in a database to create detailed profiles of preference s of the reading with regard to their purchases and browsing. Marc Rotenberg appeared in court on February 18th 2010 and stated that A person at any subroutine library or any university in the United States that attempted to retrieve information from Googles digital library would be uniquely tagged and tracked. There is simply no precedent for the creation of such causality.The court rejected the settlement but it did however state that Google should review its privacy policy to better protect its users. Google should not have the right to disclose any information to government or third parties and secure browsing should be a priority. Many people do not realise that these profiles are being created or that their privacy is being invaded. If this is supposed to be the library of the future, then it should be dealt with in the correct manner. People should be able to browse through books anonymously and have their own thoughts kept private.Google Books seem to have rushed the whol e process of scanning such a big amount of literature and by doing so they seemed to have forgotten about quality over quantity. It seems that the trance of creating a digital library will remain one for the foreseeable future due to the many flaws that the system has. Whilst Google Books are trying to correct their many errors it is apparent that the whole project was done sooner carelessly and insufficiently. It is evident that Google Books motive leans more to the commercial side of things rather than making knowledge available to a wider audience.This is particularly clear with regards to their privacy policy. Google will suggest recommended pages and sites by analysing all of your browsing. The option to purchase a book that is not available online makes Google Books more of a digital bookstore rather than a digital library. The concept of Google Books is a great one and though it has some advantages, the disadvantages outweigh the good. Bibliography Duguid, Paul. Inheritan ce and Loss? A Brief Survey on Google Books. N. p. , Aug. 2007. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. . Nunberg, Geoff. Language Log. A Google Books A Metadata Train Wreck. N. p. , 29 Aug.2009. Web. 11 Nov. 2012. http//languagelog. ldc. upenn. edu/nll/? p=1701 McSherry, Corynne. Good and Bad in Google Book Search Settlement Decision Electronic landmark Foundation. Good and Bad in Google Book Search Settlement Decision Electronic Frontier Foundation. N. p. , 23 Mar. 2011. Web. 11 Nov. 2012. . Rogers, T. Google Books Good for Knowledge, Bad for Privacy. Information Privacy Law. N. p. , 28 Mar. 2011. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. http//www. brianrowe. org/infoprivacylaw/2011/03/28/google-books-good-for-knowledge-bad-for-privacy/ Google Books. Google Books. N. p. , n. d. Web. 11 Nov. 2012. .