[Web4lib] Google Books a tease, not a useful tool, for serious research

[Richard Wiggins]

Wow, that was a shot out of left field.  Gmail is not free.  Their ads steal
my eyeballs every minute of every day.

I seek serious comments on the utility of Google Books as a research tool,
and why they may have restricted some of its utility, not irrelevant
potshots as to my use of other Google services.

The question I raise is whether users of Google Books (or, as another
pointed out, Google Patents) understand its limitations, that it is not
definitive.

/rich


On 7/6/07, Bill Drew <bill.drew at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> These comments are all valid concerns but do seem a bit disingenuous from
> people using an other free Google service, gmail.  To expect to get
> definitive results from any Google search service is a bit over the top to
> me.
>
> --
> Wilfred (Bill) Drew
> Associate Librarian, Systems and Reference
> Morrisville State College Library
> E-mail: bill.drew at gmail.com
> AOL Instant Messenger:BillDrew4
> My Wiki: http://billdrew.pbwiki.com
> Wireless Librarian: http://people.morrisville.edu/~drewwe/wireless/
> Library: http://library.morrisville.edu/
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> My Blog: http://babyboomerlibrarian.blogspot.com
> Al Gore quoting an African proverb: "If you want to go quickly, go alone.
> But if you want to go far, go together."
>
>  On 7/6/07, Brian Gray <mindspiral at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > As an engineering librarian, I have experience similar concerns with
> > Google Patents. They limit the number of results returned on your
> > search, so you never receive a complete set of patents. But, the real
> > problem is that they do not say that anywhere which may be very
> > harmful to new, first-time patent researchers.
> >
> > You can fake Google out by repeating the same patent search over and
> > over again for smaller subsets of year, and combining the results. But
> > as Rich pointed out, the results returned are not the same everytime.
> >
> > Brian Gray
> > mindspiral at gmail.com
> >
> > On 7/6/07, Richard Wiggins <richard.wiggins at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Google seems to be paranoid about others mining their data.  Do they
> > > actually change search behavior to limit the number of searches for a
> > book?
> > > If so it's obviously preventing reproducibility of research and even
> > opening
> > > the door to denial of service.
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>
>