[Web4lib] Google Allows Downloads of out-of-copyright Books

[Jonathan Gorman]

On Thu, 2 Nov 2006, Brewer, Jim wrote:

> Take a look at: http://www.top25web.com/bbs/-vp16655.html and 
> http://www.cheaphostingdirectory.com/news/20031205google.htm on the 
> topic of how Google has changed its search algorithms.


I'm confused.  The second link talks some algorithm tweaking about three 
years ago.  Google, from what I know, is constantly tweaking these 
algorithms.  The second talks about a more recent set of tweaks, but still 
from this summer.  And both of these deal with Google proper, not Google 
Books.  It seems curious that the out-of-copyright books seem to be 
disappearing.

Of course, I'm not even sure if that's actually happening.  There seems to 
be something off, but without having some recent historical data to 
compare it to, it may be difficult to show more of the full text books are 
not showing up.

It may be that the demands of the average user of google book is to find 
more recent materials.  They might want to find out Tom Clancy books with 
the character X.  So Google is attempt to tweak it so those type of 
materials rise to the top.  Or someone was furiously hacking with some 
code with beta stuff and put a semi-colon in the wrong place.

It'll be interesting to see who else notices this and if the folks at 
Search Engine Watch or similar sources do any investigating.  Been a while 
since I've read any of their materials, so I'm a little out of touch with 
the current suspected indexing practices of Google.


Jonathan T. Gorman
Research Information Specialist
University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
216 Main Library - MC522
1408 West Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: (217) 244-4688


>
>
>
> Jim Brewer
> Systems Administration & Integration Librarian
> Texas Tech University Libraries
> Office: 806.742.2238 ext. 252
> Box 4000 | Lubbock, Texas 79409-0002
> Fax: 806.742.0737
> http://www.library.ttu.edu/ul
> jim.brewer at ttu.edu
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
> [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Gorman
> Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2006 10:04 AM
> Cc: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Subject: RE: [Web4lib] Google Allows Downloads of out-of-copyright Books
>
>
> Some quick testing seems to show that some searches I've been doing
> return
> less results, but if I add words to my search I get items that didn't
> appear before.  Perhaps they're testing out some new algorithms and
> trying
> to restrict the number returned to a smaller set, but cutting out some
> of
> the titles.  How odd.
>
> Of course, I don't remember the "Full view books" radio button being
> there
> either.
>
> Sample search: ale
>
> I remember trying to find a copy of the book "Curiosities of Beer and
> Ales"  a while ago and trying several different searches.  When
> searching
> just Ale, I found the related book "In Praise of Ale" in the first page
> or
> two.  Now doing just the search Ale in either "All Books" or "Full view
> books" doesn't bring that book in the results.
>
> Doing the search: praise ale
>
> seems to bring it up as the top hit.
>
> How very unGoogle like.  Curious.  Perhaps they've been trying to return
>
> the precision of the results so that there aren't so many hits?  Some
> performance tweaking?  Or have the algorithms stayed the same but they
> added more books, causing results to be skewed?  Ah well, I'll let
> someone
> else figure this out ;).
>
>
>
> Jonathan T. Gorman
> Research Information Specialist
> University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
> 216 Main Library - MC522
> 1408 West Gregory Drive
> Urbana, IL 61801
> Phone: (217) 244-4688
>
>
> On Thu, 2 Nov 2006, Crocker, Daniel wrote:
>
>> I've been a bit out of the loop, but has anyone else noticed a
> dramatic
>> loss of access to these texts? I'd been so pleased to announce to
> people
>> that a good portion of our fragile special collections material could
> be
>> read online, and today see no sign of the books in Google Book search.
>> Searches at books.google.com that once found several dozen texts now
>> find only a handful, even prior to limiting to full-view books. Our
> list
>> of 17 texts duplicated in our paper collection has been reduced to
> just
>> 1.
>>
>> I've sent Google essentially the same question, and will summarize any
>> reply I get - but have any of you any information about what's
> happened
>> to this service?
>>
>> Much obliged,
>>
>> Daniel Crocker
>> Electronic Resources Librarian
>> New England College of Optometry - Library
>> 424 Beacon St.
>> Boston, MA 02115
>> crockerd at neco.edu
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