It's Time to Take a Look at Google Book Search
- By Michael Stillman
Google Book Search is as easy to use as...Google.
By Michael Stillman
Google Book Search recently added a couple more major universities to its controversial book-scanning project. Signing on in January was the University of Texas at Austin, while in February Princeton joined the club. That brought the total number of libraries to a dozen. Included are some of the most important libraries in the world: New York Public, Oxford, University of Michigan, Stanford, Harvard, and the University of California system. Now that the project has reached a substantial scale, both in terms of books scanned and prestigious libraries participating, it is time to take a closer look. After all, Google is barreling ahead, controversy notwithstanding, and Google has enormous resources at its disposal. This project has the potential to totally change the way books are used, and with it, the way libraries and booksellers conduct their business. No one should underestimate the significance of Google on a mission.
There are three types of books Google scans. The first is books clearly outside of copyright protection. These are mostly pre-1923 books, now open to all. Google can scan and make the full text of these books viewable to the public without there being any legal objections. The second type is copyrighted books where Google has been given permission by the publisher to scan and display at least part of the text. Again, there is no controversy here since the copyright holder has granted permission. The third type covers all other post-1923 books, but mostly those long out of print. Depending on whether copyright extensions were obtained years ago, these books may or may not still be under copyright. Here is where the controversy begins.
Google has chosen to scan the entire text of the oldest of this maybe protected, maybe not group of books, but display only "snippets" to the public. "Snippets" are just what they sound like, very small sections of text, perhaps three or four lines, including the term for which the viewer searched. You get to see where in the book your term can be found, and a small amount of surrounding text, but not enough context to learn much of anything. If you want more, Google will point you toward libraries and booksellers which have a copy. If none do, they are too far away, or the cost too high (especially since the snippet does not provide enough information to discern whether the resource is truly useful) you are out of luck.
However, while what you can see in a "snippet" is too small to tell you anything very useful, some publishers feel even this is too much. Their position is that if a book is under copyright, Google has no right to display even a "snippet" without obtaining permission. Google has responded that a "snippet" is within the "fair use" exception of copyright law, similar to a book reviewer quoting a line or two in his review, a generally accepted practice. The publishers counter, maybe so, but you are copying the entire book and placing it on your servers, even if you only display a "snippet" at a time, and copying the entire text constitutes a violation. While Google has agreed to remove books if the copyright holder objects, the publishers argue this places the cart before the horse. Google needs to get permission first, not ignore the holder's rights and wait for him to object. You cannot steal property and wait for the owner to object, keeping it if he or she never figures out what you did.
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It's Time to Take a Look at Google Book Search
- By Michael Stillman
Google Book Search finds many titles which mention Henry Clay Barnabee.
While requiring Google to ask permission may sound reasonable, the reality is that such a process is practically impossible. First of all, there is no easy way to determine whether the older post-1923 books are still under protection. The old law required the owners to obtain extensions on their copyrights. However, determining whether this was ever done is the kind of search you hire lawyers to conduct. It can be time-consuming and expensive. And this is the easy part. If the copyright was extended, how do you go about asking the copyright holder's permission? If the copyright was renewed in 1955, you may be able to find who held it and where that person lived in 1955, but where are they now? An author-copyright holder may have died years ago. Who inherited those rights? A corporate copyright holder may have gone out of business. Their places of residence as shown on their copyright forms may have been razed by bulldozers years ago, their telephones long since disconnected. How do you find this person? Then, multiply this problem by millions and millions of books. How can Google possibly ask for permission to scan these books?
We will get back to these legal and ethical considerations in a moment, but first, let's take a look at Google Book Search itself. Is it worth all the fuss? While Google Book Search is still in its infancy, it is now 18 months in the making, and we can already get a decent look at what it is, and what it has the potential to be. It is an eye-opener. However, it left us with one question: what is all the controversy about?
After you have read this article (no sooner), go to Google Book Search and try it out (we'll provide a link). Here is what we found. First of all, you get to choose to search either "all books" or "full view books." The full view books are wonderful. You can read every word. The rest are hit or miss, frustrating, and almost as much a hindrance to research as help. Publishers may object that Google is giving away too much of their copyrighted material, but the practical reality is they give you too little. In some cases, with publisher's approval, they give you a "limited preview." This is a real hit or miss scenario. Some pages are displayed, others aren't. If what you want to see is on the pages Google displays, the resource is helpful. If not, you see nothing, and have no idea whether the book provides useful information on your topic. Google guides you to booksellers and libraries where you can obtain the book, but there is no way to tell whether the information it contains is worth the effort or expense.
In other cases, Google gives you a "snippet." The three or four lines of text they provide are too little to discern whether the resource is useful to you. Finally, there are some books where all Google tells you is that your search term is somewhere in the text. Not even a "snippet" is provided.
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It's Time to Take a Look at Google Book Search
- By Michael Stillman
"Snippets" tell you so little they are of very limited use.
So why then do we like Google Book Search despite the extreme frustration it creates? The answer is in the "full view" books. You can search through every word of these pre-1923 books in an instant, something never before possible, not even if you visited every library on earth. For example, we looked up Henry Clay Barnabee, a virtually forgotten, but once popular actor. His career ran from the second half of the 19th century to the early 20th. It ended in 1917 at the dawn of the age of film. In other words, his performances went unrecorded. There is little left with which to remember him. Little, but here is something. Google Book Search finds us Famous Stars of Light Opera, a 1900 obscurity by Lewis C. Strang. The Stanford University Libraries stamp tells us where Google found this book.
We find that Barnabee got his start imitating fellow salesmen when he worked in a store, making his first public appearance in 1856. He started as a serious actor, but was thrown into the role of impersonating a "Yankee character" when another actor took ill. He proved to be a natural comedian. Strang comments that Barnabee is not a "versatile comedian," "not an originator," and his humor is "often crude and primitive." Evidently what appeals to the public today appealed even then. By the time of this book, the actor-comedian-singer Barnabee's voice "was not now what it was once," but he still was immensely popular. The book goes on to tell us much more, and descriptions of the actor we found in other books indicate that some people may have appreciated Barnabee a bit more than did Strang.
Now the point of this diversion is not to teach about Henry Clay Barnabee, but to illustrate the wealth of material now readily available for research that you almost certainly would not have found 18 months ago. There is other information about Barnabee to be found in an internet search, including the fact that his papers are stored in the collections of his hometown Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Library, if you want to really dig into his career. What Google Book Search provides is additional material you will not find in an internet search, and probably not even in the Portsmouth Library.
Still, this is just the beginning. Google must have many books now available for searching, but it is a small percentage, even of pre-1923 books. In fact, Barnabee wrote an autobiography, Reminiscences of Henry Clay Barnabee. Being an Attempt to Account for His Life, with Some Excuses for His Professional Career. Published in 1913, this book is clearly outside of copyright protection. However, Google has not yet scanned the first edition. What they have, evidently with permission, are 1971 and 2005 reprints. Since these were added with permission, only the annoying "limited preview" is allowed. You are permitted to see some pages, but many are left out. Someday, Google will undoubtedly get around to scanning the first edition, and then we will be able to read Barnabee's complete biography. For now, we can only skip through his life.
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It's Time to Take a Look at Google Book Search
- By Michael Stillman
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This brings us back to the legal issues involved. As wonderful as access to these books is, far more post-1923 than pre-1923 material has been published. Most of this is long out of print. Copyrights have either expired, or are irrelevant to the holders. The holders are often virtually untraceable descendants of authors who do not even know they hold copyrights. It wouldn't matter to them if they did, as most obscure old works will never be reprinted for profit again. They have nothing to lose by Google giving new life to their ancestors' forgotten works. Still, Google is limited to publishing only small, unhelpful "snippets" of these works, and if some publishers have their way, not even that will be allowed. All of this access to knowledge is denied for the sake of copyright holders who neither know nor care about these rights, and who will never make another dime off of them. There needs to be protection for Google to make this material fully available to the public unless the copyright holders object. Perhaps a clearinghouse could be set up where older copyright holders could provide notice they still wish their rights to be respected. Google Book Search is quickly becoming an outstanding source of knowledge, available to the entire world. The law should not stand in the way. Copyright holders who actively wish to assert their rights deserve to be protected, but they should not be able to stand in the way of the dissemination of knowledge no one desires to restrict any longer.
You may test out Google Book Search for yourself through the following link: http://books.google.com.
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