[Web4lib] Web4lib: Wikipedia

[Tim Spalding]

>Who is forcing Google to keep printed booksseparate from web search? Who is forcing
>people to use Google? As far as I know: nobody! Once the books are scanned, I don't think they
>are in a separate universe, any more than HTML and PDF files are in separate universes.

They are in the same universe, but they're not the same thing.
Wikipedia is information. Google Books is metadata about information,
and a chance to buy it. It makes no blessed sense for most people to
use and to link to Google Books, when—except for some pre-1923
books—it isn't a place to get content at all.

A simple illustration of the difference. Search for pictures of naked
people. Do you get the pictures, or do you get catalog records, tiny
snippets of the images and a list of physical places where full
pictures might be obtained? Which were you probably looking for?

Tim