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.
>



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