blogbib biblog
The whole story on
librarian blogs by Susan Herzog.
what is there not to like?
The overlaps are not. One privileges the latest and the other privileges the earliest, one mines information the other organizes it. Google can image the whole print universe and it wonít make any difference. They are blind to queries that originate in print. Google provides a screen to print, not print to screen reading behavior.
Curiously, the reading behavior associated with the web has been around much longer than the carefully developed reading behavior associated with the relatively recent invention of print. There is an illusion that the web is new because of the integration of verbal/visual communication to a single screen display. But, effervescent, face-to-face communication is as old and the anarchy of everyone figuring out the world on their own is old too.
newly legible texts from Antiquity
Don’t try this with computer media, but papyri from Antiquity, retrieved from middens, are proving readable. A 20% increase in the surviving corpus of Greek texts is anticipated.
almost rave review for FotB
“42-5025
Reviewed in 2005may CHOICE.
[Visited Jan'05] This egocentric site lacks cohesion of content, user-friendly navigation, and overall context. Navigation and general appearance are the primary problem; quality content can be found if the user is predisposed to spend the time necessary to locate information serendipitously. The main page requires a left/right scroll to view its entire content; it includes a calendar with dates that link to site content without apparent purpose or rationale. There is in general a great deal of scrolling required, each page being long with content randomly placed and lacking cohesion to the whole. The overall appearance is plain and short on visual interest, particularly unfortunate for a Web site that addresses the artistic elements of “the book.”
Graphics are present but without apparent purpose or relationship to content. Topics and individuals are discussed without sufficient introduction or rationale. Glossaries, when finally located, are useful but vague in substance in an apparent attempt to be clever. There is a bibliography of book history, but many of the titles seem out of place in the list. The Commentary and Reports pages are filled with some good content, but they lack descriptive abstracts of the articles to entice the browser into reading the full text. The Links page is cluttered, unorganized, and almost impossible to read, with little to no description or annotation; many of the links are dead. The search box is of little use since the purpose and audience are not readily apparent from the Introduction. This Web site is for family, friends, and the interested eccentric–not for academic use. Other than a list of workshops at the University of Iowa and repeated reference to the site author, there is no reference for site responsibility or credentials. Summing Up: Not recommended.” –C. B. Hudson, University of Scranton
disambiguation; start query with ìbooksî
Google is a capture and retrieval engine, not a digital collection builder, so the
Google Print and Google Scholar products do not supplant library service. And the Google products are blind to reading scenarios based in print, but augmented with on-line engines. For Google, its screen-to-print, not print-to-screen.
So the Google dictum; ìto organize the worldís information and make it accessible to allî, is somewhat hollow. Librarians organize, Google mines. And the Google view that screen based reading is equivalent to page based reading is suspect, considering the differing reading behaviors entailed. What is authentic is a new research method demanding both screen and print reading skills.