"Google Books biggest failure...or am I wrong?" Topic

Okay, Free 18th to early 20th Century detailed history books from the worlds libraries…at your fingertips.

The Historians dream.

BUT…Google books absolutely fails to scan fold out maps/charts/schematics and OBs, which is often the reason a book is downloaded.

Archive.org does a fairly good job on their own material, but Google has the market flooded.

So, my question is two-fold?

Why does Google follow this policy and who can we, as a group, complain to at Google to make our voices heard?

or

Am I wrong and these charts are scanned, but I'm looking down the wrong Google corridor?

You are not wrong at all: TMP link

I don't think there is a hidden map store where they are all scanned in unfortunately.

Regards

At the moment the scanning project is about quantity.

Down the line they may revisit complaints and errors and rectify them.

"Why does Google follow this policy"

I imagine it has a lot to do with sheer practicality. A lot of the projects at Google (even very large and public projects) are actually run by a lot less people than everyone else seems to think they are.

"and who can we, as a group, complain to at Google to make our voices heard?"

That's not quite how Google works… complaining won't really help -- I'm reasonably sure that the team involved is aware, bothered as heck about it but just can't fix the problem at the moment.

Volunteering to help in some way, on the other hand, is how to fix this stuff.

Grrrr…I insert mean word here reasonable peeple and their logical discussions, especially this early in the morning!

All kidding aside, though, what you've written makes sense.

KatieL…good idea, I have tonnes of junque, matter of fact I have an entire micro-film roll of a very rare military history set that I would love to ship off to Google, IF they will make proper use of it (i.e., scan and post it), but the roll is a page by page shot, not sure if they can do something with it.

Who would I contact about that?

And while I agree with the points you have all made, it seems that the books that Archive.org scans either on their own, or through a non-Googley-fied source, generally seem to have the fold-outs scanned.

Ah well, if that's the worst I have to complain about in life right now, I shouldn't grumble at all!

I still hope others chime in here, though, if we get a large enough crowd, I'll be happy to hand out torches and pitchforks!

Blame the Volunteers. "Google" is not scanning books. Legions of volunteers are. Google just gives them a place to be.

I imagine a big part of the problem is simple mechanics. I find maps and such that are printed on a page are there – it is the fold outs as you say that don't get included. But they are usually oversized so you'd have to do it in sections or something.

I'm guessing a lot of these volunteers are seniors and may not be the most technically savvy people around.

I've also heard in some cases they cut the binding off nd run it through the automatic feeder, so the fold outs may simply get tossed as a result…

Hey – I'm a senior and – how does this thing work?

"Who would I contact about that?"

I'll see if I can find out.

Actually I wrote to Nafziger about a related problem, he gave me a short list of college libraries that are real champs to work with in getting charts/maps copied.

I'm going to look into having one books charts done after the new year, I'll let you know how it turned out.

By the way, there is a Sudan/Khartoum map thread a few spaces below this one on the main page, I posted a very rare map of Khartoum there yesterday (with some excellent help), if you're into the Sudan or Colonials, I suggest you go there to download it.

Here's the link (map is second to the last entry [at this point in time]):

TMP link

Maybe we can set up some sort of "map/chart" shelf here on TMP…would that be possible?