FYI, I posted the following note to the LIBLICENSE-L list, as well as to NGC4LIB. Google's Jon Orwant posted this reply to LIBLICENSE-L:
"For the record, we use multiple subject schema -- no one scheme trumps another. It's not correct to say that we prefer BISAC to LoC. We sometimes try to guess a BISAC classification when none exists, and sometimes we guess wrong.
As for whether our attempts to improve the situation are utopian, all I can say is that I have a code change in flight that will improve the guessing. Whether that gets a meter or a mile closer to Utopia is not something my personal onboard navigational system is capable of displaying."
Bernie Sloan
--- On Sun, 9/20/09, B.G. Sloan <bgsloan2_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
From: B.G. Sloan <bgsloan2_at_yahoo.com>
Subject: Something from the New Yorker about Google Book Search
To: "ngc4lib" <ngc4lib_at_listserv.nd.edu>
Date: Sunday, September 20, 2009, 11:53 AM
Grafton, Anthony. Google Books and the Judge. September 18, 2009.
Some excerpts:
"...bizarrely, Google sorts books, as Geoffrey Nunberg and others have shown, not by the Library of Congress Classification, but by the Book Industry Standards and Communications used by publishers to tell booksellers where to stow a given item."
And...
"...it’s utopian to believe that the company could or would repair the millions of errors already built into the system—or that new problems won’t continue to crop up, as Google vacuums up more millions of books without finding out in advance what book professionals know about how best to identify and organize them."
Full text at:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2009/09/google-books-and-the-judge.html
Bernie Sloan
Received on Wed Sep 23 2009 - 19:44:04 EDT