> Just because someone is a "Google programmer" does not mean they can
> work magic with data that isn't there.
Although several people have agreed with this statement I'm still not
buying it! First of all we weren't talking about data that wasn't
there. We started with specific examples of SOUND metadata from
libraries working with Google that Google apparently didn't use.
I'm guessing that the problem may have come from trying to automate the
match of the (electronic) item to the data. If you didn't grab both
item and metadata at once and tie them together with an ISBN or some
sort of control number, linking the electronic item to ANY metadata
would require that you re-extract enough data from the item to search
for a matching metadata record. Of course in that step if you grab a
date that is not REALLY the publication date and then use that date as a
publication date in the search for OCLC or LC or ONIX or any other
metadata source you will end up with wrong or no metadata.
Secondly I still don't think that technical or financial issues are the
reasons for not optimally leveraging the available data. Rather I
expect that Google programmers were not knowledgeable about data quality
to grab the best available or tie it to the item where they ought to
have done so. I think the magician argument above is the converse of
the reality. We somehow imagine that Google programmers are so great
that if they didn't do something, it couldn't be done. But it's really
a corollary of the Murphy's law of computing: "The computer will do what
you TELL it to do not what you WANT it to do." Likewise programmers
will use the data in the order and amount was specified not in the way
was optimized!
I don't think that Google programmers are magicians, although I have
great respect for some of the cool things that they have done. What I
DO think is that they have server and other resources that, relative to
libraries, are virtually unlimited. What they DON'T have is the
knowledge of bibliographic metadata that would allow them to leverage
the best available in the most effective ways, YET!
JJ
**Views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent those of
the Queens Library.**
Jane Jacobs
Asst. Coord., Catalog Division
Queens Borough Public Library
89-11 Merrick Blvd.
Jamaica, NY 11432
tel.: (718) 990-0804
e-mail: Jane.W.Jacobs_at_queenslibrary.org
FAX. (718) 990-8566
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Received on Fri Sep 18 2009 - 09:46:15 EDT