Google Book Search misdating (was Re: "Better Dead Than Red") (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

Another hint:  if the document is a government document, search inside
the book for "fiscal", "fiscal year" -- this often leads to useful date
information.  Likewise "copyright".

>
> This is a problem that all of us using Google Book Search for
> antedating purposes have run up against. There's some hope
> for improvement now that the Hathi Trust has gotten involved
> (for public-domain material) and Google's lawsuits have been
> settled (for in-copyright material), as I've discussed on
> Language Log:
>
> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=602
> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=780
>
> In the meantime, there are some tricks for dealing with
> misdated periodicals.
>
> 1. A misdated record may actually have good metadata, if you
> know where to look. For periodicals, never go by the year
> listed in the main search results page (even though this is
> what's used when restricting searches to a particular date
> range). Instead, look at what's listed under "More details"
> on the About the Book Page. This often shows the correct
> date, or at least a range of a year or two.
>
> Example: http://books.google.com/books?id=FcAdAAAAMAAJ
> Year listed as 1969, metadata shows it's from 1996
>
> 2. The metadata might at least tell you the correct
> volume/issue number, which you can then check elsewhere for
> the correct date.
>
> Example: http://books.google.com/books?id=ut-2AAAAIAAJ
> Year listed as 1960, metadata shows it's from v.384
> no.8544-8548 [turns out to be Sep. 2007]
>
> 3. You might be able to see the correct year or range of
> years on the small title page image on the About The Book page.
>
> Example: http://books.google.com/books?id=FQwVAAAAIAAJ
> Year listed as 1937, title page shows it's from 1962-1963
>
> 4. As a last resort, you can try "Search in This Book" for
> year numbers to see what shows up in the results (assuming
> you can see at least snippet view).
>
> Example: http://books.google.com/books?id=aZmNAAAAIAAJ
> Year listed as 1996, search on year numbers shows it's from 2001
>
> On the bright side, it does seem that some of the old
> misdatings have actually been corrected or at least improved.
> So they're aware of the problem and are trying to do
> something about it.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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