[Web4lib] Google Print

[K.G. Schneider]

> Hm... We've got a pretty good handle on producing metadata for books in
> our
> profession. Why should Google try to reproduce a service that does what we
> as libraries and librarians do? Subject searching, for instance, has never
> been a strong suit of ISI's citation indexes, or Lexis-Nexis. And
> sometimes
> we find that frustrating. But still, if we want metadata-based searching,
> shouldn't we be going to the experts on metadata rather than the experts
> on
> link-based relevance searching?

I think Jennifer and I are on the same page... (so to speak!). If a
bibliographic item already has the metadata, why not use it in Google Print?
Though then the argument would be that all items need good metadata... and
Google's approach is that everything can be solved through search... which
would mean either automated metadata (which has got to be within a leap of
what they're doing) or something beyond metadata that enriches retrieval.

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com