James Weinheimer wrote:
> Google has done an excellent job of making it seem to be simple, and they
> have done this by designing a tool to *make people happy*, but we should not
> confuse this with providing results that are reliable and comprehensible,
> which is what people really want. And it has serious consequences, as
> students will tell you.
>
What Google is excellent at is the "known-item search". You need only
know a characteristic phrase and its exact spelling(!), put it in
quotes, and you are happy.
This must not be confounded with the *subject search*, but this mixing
up of different functions is what happens all the time: users think
they get stuff *about* XYZ while they always only get stuff that
contains the character sequence "XYZ". Within a full text, various
synomyms and inflections of a term may occur and the impression may
arise that Google finds not what you entered but what you wanted, what
you had in mind. In this case, results might make you feel lucky, but
you'd not be happy to know that you missed better stuff that contained
the (politically or otherwise) more correct or more pertinent or
up-to-date wording. Not to speak of other languages ... But of course,
the million or so "results" do often contain stuff that looks quite
relevant, so in many cases the unlucky person turns away with it.
And of course, it doesn't always matter if you find the best stuff,
something "good enough" will do most of the time. But the experience
wires your attitude into thinking "G. finds stuff about XYZ".
What Google is the worst at is collocation searching (works by ...,
editions of ..., parts of ...).
What it doesn't do at all is any other arrangement than "relevance".
(A misleading metaphor, but everyone is happy with it.)
GBS does a much less "fuzzy" search. More often than not, you have
to enter an exact spelling or get nothing. With ISBNs, for example, in
the cases where they have only the metadata, you have to enter an ISBN
without hyphens or you end up not happy at all.
In another check last week, I found that about 25% of recent books
(1995 to present) currently on loan (i.e., in demand), are in GBS as
part of their "publisher program", which means available as "preview".
Not a one title was available in full (much different with 19th cent
titles!). 75% were only found as references, if at all. So, a "critical
mass" has not been reached yet.
B.Eversberg
Received on Mon Apr 26 2010 - 07:03:11 EDT