[Web4lib] The missing Google books

[Jim Campbell]

Searching in Google Book Search seems to be working better today - at least
I'm no longer seeing anomalies in author searching - but the missing books
noted here a few weeks ago still seem to be missing. I've got a theory that
explains some of them and wonder if anyone else has noticed patterns in
what's gone.

The theory is that they're deduping their database.  What I noticed was
missing was volumes in sets. Looking again this morning I see pretty
consistently that in a given multi-volume set, say Ruskin's Works, only one
volume remains.  Since Google Book doesn't seem to track volume numbers in
their metadata, they're probably deduping based on
author/title/date/publisher so Ruskin Works 1889 ends up with one volume
left.  This would also affect journals that publish more than one volume in
a year.

- Jim Campbell
Campbell at Virginia.edu