Comments on: Google Searching Your Bookshelf

By: The Big List of Things I Like About LibraryThing at Deeplinking

The Big List of Things I Like About LibraryThing at Deeplinking — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:24:08 +0000

[...] Google Book Search until their embeddable book clippings started breaking and I realized their full-text search only covers a small percentage of the books I’m interested in [...]

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:48:09 +0000

Thanks for mentioning Shelfari (even if it’s just a little mention at the end of a post).

At any rate, we just launched a new blog widget at http://www.shelfari.com/widget

Try it out and let me know what you think.

–Dave

By: Unusual Suspect

Unusual Suspect — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:02:47 +0000

To Lauren — Google Books can be an extension of your blog if you post on a particular topic. My blog will link to my library, and as I add reviews, I’ll post a notice with the new titles.

By: lauren

lauren — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 18:03:50 +0000

Alright, Google Library Promoter Man. I’m gonna check it out, for sure.

But I still maintain (pre- playing with this myself) that you can just as easily use Google Book Search on your library *without* cataloging it, thanks to Advanced Book Search.

And that they need to add covers to their RSS feed before they get all of my praise. You, of all people, should totally get behind that idea!

By: Sean

Sean — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 16:28:23 +0000

PS: As I add books to my library on Google I’m realizing that full-text search is not very useful if you don’t have the books on hand, because in many cases you get only a fragment of a sentence for context and a page number. Googling books nearby is powerful.

By: Sean

Sean — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 02:23:03 +0000

Instant searchability of your books allows you to get more out of the books you own. I’ve accumulated a lot of books that I haven’t read cover to cover but that I know are valuable. If I can query them in the myriad ways I query the web all day, I think I can get more out of them. Because when you find yourself on an interesting book page on Google Book Search, you don’t get to keep reading the rest of the book online. You get a few pages for context in most cases. If you’re searching books you own, Google Book Search becomes more of a jumping-off point, enabling further discovery of the books you were smart enough to pick up.

For book accumulators with short attention spans and limited patience, that’s some real added value. Bookshelves that have accumulated dust while you were at your computer reading about books come back to life!

Google’s book information pages also enable discovery of related books better than the social networks, in my experience. And if you want to show off your Google library you’re welcome to post a link and RSS badge on the world wide web.

By: lauren

lauren — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 23:49:04 +0000

I have to agree, Google Books has by far the most robust book info.

So, we all know my limited enthusiasm for socializing around my books from previous snarky comments on your bookish social networking sites (summary: Only slightly more meaningful than socializing around one’s button collection, if one collected buttons. Why not actually read a book instead?).

But if My Library offers no socialization features, how much value are you really getting for the effort of cataloging your entire library?

In other words, why is searching your own library preferable to searching the entire library of Google Books? If I’m looking for a quote that’s on the tip of my tongue or a great idea I read a few years back, a) I probably know enough of the surrounding key words to make a limiting query, and b) I’d rather have all available books for my search in case I forgot to catalog the one I’m thinking of.

So what is the added value here? I know I’ve gotta be missing something. I feel like I should be totally psyched about this, but I’m not sure why.