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If the Google link were part of a much larger set of unstressed links, I'd be more inclined to favor it. Lots of linking is a good thing. But a single no-info Google link from a low-information OPAC page seems to compound the deficiencies of one paradigm with that of another. On the subject of "lazy" students, I do think there is a legitimate distinction between what students will do and what they ought to do. Being pro-Web 2.0 doesn't require us to be information relativists. Certainly there is a lot of ignorant criticism about Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a remarkable resource, and an inspiration to us all. Students will and probably should use it when they're starting out on a topic. That some students will use it long after that, in the place of better resources online and off, because it's the "path of least resistance" isn't just a fact of life we must all bow before. It is a problem we must confront. Not infrequently the right answer is "get off your butt and read a book." Tim On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 8:44 AM, Custer, Mark <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > For the most part, I completely agree. That said, it's a very tangled > web out there, and on occasion those "no preview" views can still lead a > user to a "full view" that's offered elsewhere. Here's just one > example: > > http://books.google.com/books?id=kdiYGQAACAAJ > (from there, a user can click on the first link to be taken to another > metadata page that has access to a "full view") > > Unfortunately, there's no indication that either of these links will get > you to a full-text digitized copy of the book in question (the links > always, of course, appear under the header of "References from web > pages", which Google has nicely added), and there's also no way to know > that a "no preview" book has any such "references from web pages" until > you access the item, but it's something, at least, however unintended. > > It'd be nice, perhaps, if you could put some sort of standard in the > metadata header of the webpage (DC or otherwise) to indicate to a > harvester (in this case, a crawler) the specific format of the > retrieval. Then these links could be labeled as "digitized copies > available elsewhere", rather than simply "references from web pages" > (which, of course, is all that they are right now), and could also be > added to the API callback. That is, of course, if Google doesn't > eventually put up these and other localized resources as well (and I'm > sure they'll cover most of these, with the collections that they do > have)... but until or if they do, it would go a longer way to > fulfilling their mission. > > Mark Custer > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of > Tim Spalding > Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 6:52 PM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] coverage of google book viewability API > > So, I took a long slow look at ten of the examples from Godmar's file. > Nothing I saw disabused me of my opinion: "No preview" pages on Google > Book Search are very weak tea. > > Are they worthless? Not always. But they usually are. And, > unfortunately, you generally need to read the various references pages > carefully before you know you were wasting your time. > > Some examples: > > Risks in Chemical Units > (http://books.google.com/books?id=7ctpAAAACAAJ) has one glancing, > un-annotated reference in the footnotes of another, apparently > different book. > > How Trouble Made the Monkey Eat Pepper > (http://books.google.com/books?id=wLnGAAAACAAJ) sports three > references from other books, two in snippet view and one with no view. > Two are bare-bones bibliographic mentions in an index of Canadian > children's books and an index of Canadian chidren's illustrators. The > third is another bare-bones mention in a book in Sinhalese. > >> If the patron is sitting on a computer (which, given this > discussion, they obviously are), the >> path of least resistance dictates that a journal article will be used > before a book. > > An excellent example. Let's imagine you were doing reference-desk work > and a student were to come up to you with a question about a topic. > You have two sources you can send them to-the book itself in all its > glory, and another source. The other source is the Croatian-language > MySpace page of someone whose boyfriend read a chapter of the book > once, five years ago. You're not sure if the blog mentions the book, > but it might. > > That something provides the path of least resistance isn't an argument > for something. It depends on where the path goes. > -- Check out my library at http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding