Google Book Search Search...
I am voluntarily and temporarily suspending Google Book Search Search, our effort to distribute the task of collecting Google books IDs for LibraryThing members through a browser "bookmarket."I am talking with Google about some other approaches that they might be able to simplify the process of linking to Book Search pages. Google has communicated their desire to make it easy for sites like LibraryThing and libraries to link to Google books appropriately and successfully.
The GBSS bookmarklet showed the power of the LibraryThing community. In about a day more than 1,500 LibraryThing members (and many non-members) installed the bookmarklet and collected GBS link data for over 253,000 of theirs and others books. If we had solved more of the browser issues, I'm sure we would have collected many more.
The links members discovered will be kept, and the data is available. We will be adding new tools for members to edit and add Google book ID information by hand, if necessary.
As you may guess, we are going to be doing some listening, some talking and some thinking. I would be grateful for your continued support as we work through this.
Labels: features, google book search
posted by Tim at 10:00 AM
10 Comments:
Whew! I was able to get my library (3190 books)entirely done. I figured Google was getting antsy when I started getting the notification that the GBSS app. might be some malware!
This is a great tool; yes, there are numerous mistakes (wrong/no/reused ISBN; Google 'guessing' based on title, etc.) but having all books (eventually) linked up with Google preview is great.
True, not all books will be so available, but tens of thousands will. I look forward to the new tools. Keep in mind that Google 'misses', when they find only a part of a work, are useful.
So, for example, my 'History of Dogma' by Harnack spans several volumes; Google found part of it but no exact matches to the books I have. I don't want to delete them because they are parts of wholes. In this way even near misses are good things!
Perhaps the new tools will take that into account.
Joe
If we had solved more of the browser issues, I'm sure we would have collected many more.
Too true. While it would have been nice to have my books there, it wasn't high on my list of priorities, so I decided to wait until the bugs were worked out. And the more I waited, the more kinks I seemed to see (not necessarily related to the "bookmarklet").
So now I'll wait a bit more. No big deal. Thanks for working on this, and keeping us informed!
Google has communicated their desire to make it easy for sites like LibraryThing and libraries to link to Google books appropriately and successfully.
This is good to hear.
I got through my 3800+ collection in about 24 hours. (It finished this morning.) I was going to set it to run against the books of others when I left this afternoon for a few days but I guess that won't be happening now. Please keep us posted. I'll be happy to contribute my CPUs to the cause.
This is weird. I tried redoing one of my views to see if any book in my library had gotten Google Data (since I hadn't gotten the search bookmarklet yet) and now I get an array error. Looks DB related as it is talking about a Left Join in the error...
-Gilroy
Internet Archive (Open Content Alliance) is the superior book scanning service IMO. It does not have as many books, and only books in the public domain, but I would rather link there than Google Books for a number of reasons. Hopefully we will have that option.
Ideally, we would have options to link to multiple electronic copies. An "add URL" for books would be
helpful. (Maybe in the fielded wiki.)
Integrated searching is a particular app, though, beyond linking to the digitized copies, and for right now Google books appears to have the most books available for integrated searching. As other online book indexes ramp up I would hope they would get added too.
Tim,
I hope you guys (Google and LT) work something out. The value of the two services working in harmony is so huge!
The details are just that, details to be perfected as you go along!
Eoinhttp://eoinp
Despite numerous attempts I never did get this to work. Reading through comments on original post I clearly wasn't alone. Repeatedly the search would find the one and same book (the first book entered to my library I think) and then just get stuck.
The idea of conducting a word by word search through google of my books at home is very appealing. Even those snippet views would cease to frustrate. Armed with the page number all you have to do is remember on which shelf you left that pesky book on!
How do you add a Google Book Search ID by hand? Does it work for non-ISBN books?
I agree that links to Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, and other open content would be great. (I generally prefer PG editions because they're ASCII I can search/manipulate, not PDFs I can only read/print.) Having said that, diversity is good and I did find a few pleasant surprises while using the bookmarklet to search Google Books for my library. :)
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