Re: [ADS-L] Historian Criticizes Google Book Search Quality

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

I have had an aol account for about ten years and have never heard of "AOLs 
Live Search Books." A search using AOL's search engine turns up only 
Microsoft's "Live Search Books"--which of course seems to require Windows to run. What 
does AOL have to do with it? Is this something that is going to be available to 
Mac users?

In a message dated 5/3/07 5:58:57 PM, wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM writes:


> AOLs Live Search Books is vastly superior in quality but offers far fewer 
> books, no periodicals, and virtually nothing after 1923.
> 
>   What's there, however, is really there, with title pages and 
> publication/copyright dates easily viewable.
> 
>   JL
> 
> Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header 
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
> Subject: Historian Criticizes Google Book Search Quality
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
> 
> From Library Journal Academic Newswire...
> 
> -----
> http://www.libraryjournal.com/clear/CA6438999.html?nid=2673
> Early Reviews: Historian Criticizes Google Book Search Quality
> How history will judge Google Book Search remains an open question,
> but one historian has offered a pretty harsh assessment of its current
> efforts. "Over the past three months, I spent a fair amount of time on
> [Google Book Search] as part of a research project on the early
> history of the profession," historian and assistant director for
> research and publications for the American Historical Association,
> (AHA) Robert Townsend, writes on the AHA blog. "And from a
> researcher's point of view, I have to say the results were deeply
> disconcerting." As a user, a publisher, and a scholar studying the
> work of historians, Townsend has a strong base from which to judge
> Google's efforts, and warns that the project is "piling mistake upon
> mistake with little evidence of basic quality control."
> [snip]
> -----
> 
> Links to: 
> http://blog.historians.org/articles/204/google-books-whats-not-to-like
> 
> Townsend and the commenters on his post cover many of the same gripes
> about GBS that have come up on ADS-L recently.
> 
> 
> --Ben Zimmer
> 
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