Tim Spalding wrote:
>
> * Is it time to decide that the next catalog is no catalog at all?
> * Is it Google? A kiosk? A cell phone? A WorldCat metastasis?
We were interested to find out more about the coverage of Google
Booksearch in relation to books actually borrowed from our library.
How much of what people borrow from us could be obtained from GBS
right now?
A random sample of 500 actual use cases was drawn out of over 100.000
borrowings from the closed stacks recorded over some period in 2005/06.
The publication dates of titles *in the sample* are spread evenly over
the last 200+ years. Roughly 300 titles are from 1900-2006, 200 are
older. Most titles are German.
All sample titles were looked up in GBS by end of March 2010.
The complete table with evaluation and comments:
http://www.allegro-c.de/google/gbscheck.htm
Just the figures:
56 Titles with one complete digitized copy
8 with more than one
16 Full text of other edition
6 Part of full text available (only newer titles)
---------
86 Titles with at least some full text (most of them 19th cent.)
23 Snippets (i.e., a digitization *exists*)
(These may presumably become accessible eventually, after an
agreement with publishers)
354 Metadata only
37 Titles not found in GBS
---------
500
We can, however, *NOT* conclude that 17.2% of total borrowings could be
satisfied by using GBS since, other than in the sample, the majority of
books borrowed is 20th cent. and later (where GBS coverage is
considerably smaller):
In the total number of recorded borrowings, we found
1 % before 1900
80 % 1900-1999
19 % 2000-
Only 24 full text instances are after 1899, about 8% of borrowings
within that period. Currently mostly just snippets, of course!
To be more realistic, the sample should thus have covered time periods
in a very different way...
B.Eversberg
Received on Mon Mar 29 2010 - 03:46:31 EDT