Google Books' Biggest Screw-Up Danger?? (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Dave Wilton]

They don't need to open it up to just anybody, but if they formed an
advisory committee of historians, librarians, literature professors,
lexicographers, and other professionals who use Google Books in their
research, that would go a long way.

Then publish the names and professional affiliations of the advisory
committee members. That would enable most professionals to get in touch one
of the committee members and provide input from a wider community. You
needn't publish the contact info, but with a name and affiliation most of us
would be able to get in touch with at least one of the committee members.
(Actually, I suspect that just such an advisory committee exists, but nobody
knows about it.)

Grant's idea of a wiki is a good way to involve a wider community than you
just the advisory committee. Make it an invitation-only thing if they want
to limit who can provide input.

Another idea is to hire an evangelist/ombudsman to receive and filter the
requests from the research community. (If there is one, he/she isn't doing a
very good job.)

None of these are mutually exclusive. Google could (and should) do them all.

I agree the biggest problems are inaccurate metadata and restrictions on
public domain works, but the next biggest problem is the inability to order
search results. In the advanced search page, one should be able to request
that the results be returned in order of most recent first, oldest first,
author's name, title, etc.

If they are really concerned about making ads work, then they should have a
product that people find compelling and useful. That will increase traffic
to the site and make ad space there even more valuable. As it stands now,
Google Books is all but worthless, and you won't get much money for ads on a
worthless site.


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
David Borowitz
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 8:54 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Google Books' Biggest Screw-Up Danger?? (UNCLASSIFIED)

I don't really have a legitimate "in" in that I don't personally know
anybody on the book search team. It just happens that, for whatever reason,
the only form I could find to submit this kind of problem was on the
intranet, so I thought I'd help out with what little I can. (Criticize this
policy if you want. I don't have any inside information, but my guess is
that if they opened this up to everybody it would be inundated with little
requests at a pace beyond the ability of anyone to respond. To the point,
perhaps, that more serious issues like this one would be completely lost in
the noise.)

On 9/10/07, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      Re: Google Books' Biggest Screw-Up Danger?? (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
>
> Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> If you do have a legitimate "in" to the people who run this project, an
> even bigger improvement would be for them to make fully viewable those
> documents which are obviously in the public domain -- government
> documents, and those items published before 1923, etc.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: American Dialect Society
> > [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of David Borowitz
> > Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 9:20 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Re: Google Books' Biggest Screw-Up Danger??
> >
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       David Borowitz <borowitz at STANFORD.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: Google Books' Biggest Screw-Up Danger??
> > --------------------------------------------------------------
> > -----------------
> >
> > I'm an intern at Google, and I posted something on an
> > internal list of typos/mistaggings for Book Search. No
> > guarantee there'll be a response, of course, but it can't hurt.
> >
> > Dave
> >
> > On 9/10/07, Chris F Waigl <chris at lascribe.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > > -----------------------
> > > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > > Poster:       Chris F Waigl <chris at LASCRIBE.NET>
> > > Subject:      Re: Google Books' Biggest Screw-Up Danger??
> > >
> > >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > ---------
> > >
> > > Joel S. Berson wrote:
> > > > How 'bout a denial of service attack?
> > > A very bad idea, and not the same as...
> > > > Flood this mailbox with
> > > > complaints about the deficiencies in searches inside books.
> > > >
> > > I've written to a friend who works at Google on Blog Search
> > and who's
> > > certainly sympathetic to these uses of Google Books. With a bit of
> > > luck he might be able to suggest a real human contact.
> > >
> > > If I hear something I'll post it.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > > Chris
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
> >     -Tom Stoppard
> >
> > Borowitz
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
    -Tom Stoppard

Borowitz

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org