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

[Jim Campbell]

They may be tinkering with searching, but there's something else going on as
well.

Figuring that an author search ought to be more straightforward than a
keyword search, I did a couple of author searches I've done before.  I
limited my search to Full view to test a suspicion that Google was removing
full view titles because of fear of offending publishers, and sure enough,
several things I had downloaded a month ago were now no longer available.

But that nice theory quickly ended when I repeated my author searches for
all books, no limit to full view.  Authors who a month ago produced 2-3
pages of results now produced only 5-10 entries total.  And I don't think
that having pulled completely all the full view titles would be enough to
explain that difference. And I don't understand why they would pull them
completely and not just limit the view options.

There is also one work that Stanford has in two copies. A month ago both
copies were in Google, now there's only one.

Oh, and there was also one full view title there that hadn't been there a
month ago. I downloaded it immediately.

- Jim Campbell
Campbell at Virginia.edu


And a PS:
After I wrote all that, I thought of another test.  I had been searching for
"inauthor:klinger inauthor:friedrich" so I went back and searched just for
"inauthor:klinger"  None of the results I got for "inauthor:klinger
inauthor:friedrich" showed up in the search just for the last name.

So maybe it is a searching screwup.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org 
> [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Gorman
> Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2006 11:04 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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