> 0.2% full text? Yowch!
>
> Do academic libraries with full-text versions of the book on their
> shelves really want to point people to no-preview pages on Google.
> That's like a dating site with no photos of the members, and the
> profiles omit everything but their favorite potato variety.
At first, this whole thing reminded me of a few years back when Amazon
wanted libraries to load their inventory into catalogs. The idea was
that letting people know an item that wasn't available in the library
could be bought from Amazon was a useful service. Not too many
libraries were takers.
0.2% might even be better and worse than it looks. Worse in the sense
that it could be some random public domain garbage that there's little
or no demand for. However, at the end of the day the percentage of
books available full text is far less important than if the ones that
are available are the ones that people want.
On the other hand, if partial preview really is available for 6.2%, it
could be very useful for helping people decide if they need a book at
all. This has significant implications for ILL and circ costs over the
long haul. Presumably, the number of books with a preview available
will increase dramatically with time.
kyle
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