1. Second Look at Google Books Ryan James University of Hawaii at Manoa rsjames@hawaii.edu

2. Legibility

3. Methodology 50 randomly selected books –Random.org –OED 2,500 pages examined for legibility errors –First fifty pages, excluding prefatory material Major errors = loss of information Minor errors = difficult to read information

4. Summary of Results Legibility Number of Books50 Number of Pages2500 Major Errors15 % of Pages with Major Errors0.6 Minor Errors9 % of Pages with Minor Errors0.36 % of Pages with both types of errors 0.96

5. Major Error

6. Minor Error

16. Impact of Legibility Errors Loss of information Difficult to read information Frustrated Users OCR problems

17. Metadata Errors

18. Methodology 400 randomly selected records reviewed –Random.org –OED 1,600 metadata fields reviewed –

19. Metadata FieldErrors Found% of Errors Publisher8341% Author4824% Publication Date4120% Title3115% Total203100%

20. Errors per Book Expect around 1-12% error rate per traditional library catalog error rate Found 35.76% error rate (records having at least one error)

21. Types of Errors

22. Errors per Book

23. Example Search Author Edgar Allan Poe Works published before 1809

25. Impact of Metadata Errors Errors in search results –results list order –advanced searching –Frustrated Users Problems integrating with other information systems

26. Optical Character Recognition

27. Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the question, Whether tis nobler in the minde to suffer The flings and arrowes of outragious fortune, Or to take Armes against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them, to die to fleepe

28. Impact of OCR Errors Keyword searching! Frustrated Users Frustrated Disabled Users –text-to-speech technology

29. The Importance of Fleepe Cross-contamination of errors –errors in one Google product show up in other Google products

31. Ngram Viewer

32. Final thoughts How significant are the errors found in Google Books? Is it useful to patrons? What role can Google Books play?

33. James, R. (2010). An Assessment of the legibility of Google Books. Journal of Access Services, 7(4), 223-228. pre-pub version: http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10 125/15358 Email: rsjames@hawaii.edu