Alexis Turner

Google Book Search Blows

(books, google, metadata, search — )

29 Aug. 2007

All I wanted to do was write a spider to steal all of the public domain books off of Google. But I can't. You know why?

You can't specifically search the metadata on Google Books.

That's right - no metadata. For you non-library/non-tech geeks out there who have no idea what I'm talking about, that means you can't do complex searches on the "aboutness" of a book. The text of a book is just text, but the metadata includes keywords on who wrote it, where it was written, when it was written, what it is about. Since a bazillion words appear in a book, it is often useful to search strictly on human-created, trusted metadata....it takes out the extra cruft and minimizes false positive results. But without that ability, you can't go "oh, Google Books, show me just the fiction," because the word "fiction" might appear in the title of an academic paper about fiction, but which itself is non-fiction. Google, as a machine, doesn't handle the difference between those two concepts very adeptly. It also doesn't appear to appreciate the difference between a book and a journal, and you can't search for items published in a particular country.

God, I hate Google more and more with each passing day.