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| Format: | Recurso educativo Open Access |
| Language: | en |
| Published: |
2009
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ847410 |
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| _version_ | 1867181914399440897 |
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| author | Musto, Ronald G. |
| author_facet | Musto, Ronald G. Musto, Ronald G. |
| collection | Education Resources Information Center |
| contents | Google Books Mutilates the Printed Past Musto, Ronald G. Archives Electronic Libraries Video Technology Online Vendors Research Opportunities Research Projects Duplication Reprography In this article, the author discusses a mutilation that he has encountered involving Google Book Search. That massive text-digitization project, working in collaboration with several of the world's most important library collections, has now made available, in both PDF and text view, tens of thousands of 19th-century titles while it awaits the results of a legal settlement to determine whether and how it will make available tens of thousands of 20th-century works. Meanwhile Google Books offers scholars all the pitfalls and benefits of using the research results of the 19th century: Much of the fiction, essays, and nonfiction of that century is no longer of much critical or entertainment value. But thousands of pages of primary-source materials in their original editions--the great historical enterprises of that century--are now available at one's desktop with a few clicks of the mouse. While that is no substitute for primary research in the archives or in manuscript collections, it's truly a revolution in research on previously edited and published documents. For the history of late medieval Naples, with its relative paucity of physical archives and its dependence on later editions, Google Books is a godsend. However, in its frenzy to digitize the holdings of its partner collections, Google Books has pursued a "good enough" scanning strategy. The books' pages were hurriedly reproduced: No apparent quality control was employed, either during or after scanning. A random spot-check of other Google-scanned books has yielded some better results, but the general drift is clear: good enough for one's mutilated view of the past, rushed through the scanning process so that Google could lay claim to as many artifacts of the cultural past in as short a time and with as small a budget as possible. The author contends that Google Book Search promised to bring the world's archives to people's computers. Instead, too often, people are getting the digitally mutilated remains. |
| format | Recurso educativo Open Access |
| id | eric_EJ847410 |
| institution | ERIC Institute of Education Sciences |
| language | en |
| publishDate | 2009 |
| record_format | eric |
| spellingShingle | Google Books Mutilates the Printed Past Musto, Ronald G. Archives Electronic Libraries Video Technology Online Vendors Research Opportunities Research Projects Duplication Reprography Google Books Mutilates the Printed Past Musto, Ronald G. Archives Electronic Libraries Video Technology Online Vendors Research Opportunities Research Projects Duplication Reprography In this article, the author discusses a mutilation that he has encountered involving Google Book Search. That massive text-digitization project, working in collaboration with several of the world's most important library collections, has now made available, in both PDF and text view, tens of thousands of 19th-century titles while it awaits the results of a legal settlement to determine whether and how it will make available tens of thousands of 20th-century works. Meanwhile Google Books offers scholars all the pitfalls and benefits of using the research results of the 19th century: Much of the fiction, essays, and nonfiction of that century is no longer of much critical or entertainment value. But thousands of pages of primary-source materials in their original editions--the great historical enterprises of that century--are now available at one's desktop with a few clicks of the mouse. While that is no substitute for primary research in the archives or in manuscript collections, it's truly a revolution in research on previously edited and published documents. For the history of late medieval Naples, with its relative paucity of physical archives and its dependence on later editions, Google Books is a godsend. However, in its frenzy to digitize the holdings of its partner collections, Google Books has pursued a "good enough" scanning strategy. The books' pages were hurriedly reproduced: No apparent quality control was employed, either during or after scanning. A random spot-check of other Google-scanned books has yielded some better results, but the general drift is clear: good enough for one's mutilated view of the past, rushed through the scanning process so that Google could lay claim to as many artifacts of the cultural past in as short a time and with as small a budget as possible. The author contends that Google Book Search promised to bring the world's archives to people's computers. Instead, too often, people are getting the digitally mutilated remains. |
| title | Google Books Mutilates the Printed Past |
| topic | Archives Electronic Libraries Video Technology Online Vendors Research Opportunities Research Projects Duplication Reprography |
| url | https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ847410 |