The TLS on Google Books
October 2nd, 2009 by Tony Doyle
The following is from the September 25 Times Literary Supplement (specifically its arch NB column):
” . . . Geoffrey Nunberg of the University of California, Berkeley has recently described [Google Books] as a ‘Metadata Train Wreck’. . . . By this he means that Google Books told him that the year 1899 apparently saw the publication of ‘Raymond Chandler’s Killer in the Rain, The Portable Dorothy Parker, Andre Malraux’s La Condition Humaine, Stephen King’s Christine, The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf, Raymond William’s Culture and Society, Robert Shelton’s biography of Bob Dylan, Fodor’s Guide to Nova Scotia, and the Portuguese edition of the book of Yellow Submarine’. Professor Nunberg estimates that there are ‘hundreds of thousands of errors’, which will resist even the best-intentioned fixers. . . . For the time being, to do reliable research, go to a library.
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