Apart from the text does Google Book Search really have anything to do with the life of a book?
I am not so sure.
As Paul Duguid points out in his illuminating piece Inheritence and loss? A brief survey of Google Books:
“Even with some of the best search and scanning technology in the world behind you, it is unwise to ignore the bookish character of books.”
Using Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy as his book of choice Duguid exposes some major quality control issues inherent in Google’s digitization process. From missing pages to poorly scanned pages to the complete absence of vital data (like lack of volume numbers or edition) the reliability of the project itself is now questionable at best.
Here are some other gems from the piece:
-“transferring any complex communicative artifacts between generations of technology is always likely to be more problematic than automatic.”
-the “newer form is always in danger of a kind of patricide, destroying in the process the resources it hope to inherit.”
-“With each scanned page, Google Books’ Library Project, by its quantity if not necessarily by its quality, makes the possibility of a better alternative unlikely. The Project may then become the library of the future, whatever its quality, by default.”
Aside from the quality issues the entire material culture of the book is discarded. Google is an information monster whose only concern is content. We get only text and no context. We lose too much.
As you can imagine the piece has stirred up some debate. Most notably from Patrick Leary, the editor of the SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing) listserv and author of the article Googling the Victorians (pdf), who disses Druguid calling his effort “perversely wrongheaded” and “silly.” Leary sticks to the pros of the Google Book Search as a research tool and tosses Druguid argument out the window.
Druguid’s piece has little to do with the benefits of the increased availability of content for the researcher and Leary’s comments seem inappropriate and somewhat angry. Coming from someone so involved in book history is a bit baffling.
Peter Brantley at O’Reily Radar shares the exchange that took place between Druguid and Leary. The post as well as the comments are a must read for anyone interested in this issue.