Tom Roper's Weblog

A new angle on Google Books

Most of the discussion about Google Books revolves around the intellectual property issues and the implications for the future of allowing Google to seize a monopolistic position. See this debate on the BBC news site for example.

I discovered on Languagelog a different slant on the question, an analysis of the quality of the metadata in Google Books. It's alarming. There are

• wrong publication dates galore
• absurb misclassifications: Moby Dick under Computers? Or look at these for Tristram Shandy: 'of the first ten hits for Tristram Shandy, four are classified as fiction, four as "Family & Relationships," one as "Biography & Autobiography," and one is not classified. Other editions of the novel are classified as "Literary Collections," "History," and "Music." '
• perhaps my favourite, a book called The Mosaic Navigator: The essential guide to the Internet Interface. Older readers may remember the Mosaic browser. I discarded it in favour of Netscape around 1995. Google gives this a publication date of 1939, over fifty years too early and attributes authorship to Sigmund Freud and Katherine Jones.

For more detail, for a response from Google Books, and a response to the response, see Google Books: a Metadata Train Wreck

On the road to Rio again

Readers who have stayed with me since March may recall the invitation I received to address an International Psycholinguistics Meeting in Brazil on the dichotomy between representational and derivational models. The organisers had mistaken me, a humble British librarian, for the distinguished professor of linguistics at the University of Massachusetts, Thomas Roeper.

I wrote to them twice to point out their mistake, but they continue to send me messages. The latest one arrived the other day, asking for a copy of my cv. I have supplied it: it may convince them that they have the wrong man. If not, I look forward to a first class flight to Rio and a few days in Brazil in January at their expense.

New libraries proliferate in Wandsworth

I have long had an unproven theory that the biggest concentration of libraries in London, if not the country, must be in Bloomsbury, if one defines that area generously. One cannot throw a stone south of the Euston Road without hitting an academic, special or medical library. But for a brief moment, Wandsworth can claim to have the highest concentration of new libraries in the capital. Yesterday the new Wandsworth Town library opened in the old court house building, formerly the borough's museum. I visited at lunchtime and was impressed. There's self-issue, free wifi, and the designers have made the most of some complicated and awkward spaces. Outside staff handed leaflets to passers by, and inside signed up new readers like anything. All the rooms were busy, none less than the computer suite. If only they had CDs, it would be perfect, but there's nothing to beat having a library so close. There are more photos on Flickr.

Round the corner, we continue to put the finishing touches to the new LRC at my workplace, South Thames College. Will it all be ready in time?

What do we want from public libraries?

At the same time as CILIP nationally is preparing guidelines on what makes a good public library service, to be presented to the Public Library Authorities conference in October, my local library service, East Sussex, is asking its users and non-users what they want from the service. I shall certainly contribute my views and I hope the Friends of Seaford Library* will do so too. East Sussex's services are primitive, and that's putting it kindly.

I am alarmed though at the suggestion that the CILIP guidelines need to be ‘in a language that speaks to senior councillors'. It might be better to write them in good, clear English, for those who use, or could use, public libraries.

* or FOSL, pronounced, in a dig at the town's reputation as having an ageing population, as fossil

25 years of PowerPoint: good heavens

Brian Kelly's UK Web Focus blog tells me that, for better or worse, PowerPoint has been with us for 25 years. 25 years of PowerPoint. But What Next? I'm surprised. I first came across computer presentation software in the early 1990s, while working in the NHS, where the package of choice was a thing called Harvard Graphics. Many was the happy afternoon I spent in the GP Tutors office upstairs in the Postgraduate Centre at Edgware General Hospital, trying to beat pie charts into shape. Harvard Graphics ran slowly, if it ran at all. Non-conformists that we were, we used WordPerfect for word-processing and Lotus 1-2-3 for spreadsheets. I think I came under the thrall of Mr Gates later om the 1990s.

Fairyhouse and Sandown

The Ebor meeting has come and gone and I said nothing about it, largely because, apart from Sea the Stars, I had no winning selections throughout the four days. Perhaps today will be better:

Sandown 240: Buzzword
Sandown 315: Greylami
Fairyhouse 420: Dick Turpin

Le Monde on Google Books

As a way of keeping my knowledge of French alive, I read Le Monde on Fridays, a day chose beacuse it's the day for Le Monde des Livres, the book reviews. In today's I was startled to see Richard Ovenden of the Bodleian in the first paragraph of an article on Google Books. It's interesting to read a perspective on this from outside the usual Anglo-American perspective. They note for example that all the editions of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables in Google Books are English translations.

Google, l'utopie du livre pour tous

Personas: my inpenetrable skirts

After something of a struggle, I persuaded Personas to work. It's amusing to watch it at work, confusing me with the impostors around the web who have used my name. And it gives a pretty graphic at the end:

As it progresses it throws up some intriguing items. I was reassured to come upon the phrase, 'Tom Roper is not like a British politician', but puzzled by the assertion that 'Tom Roper is back with an incredibly powerful flipper, and practically inpenetrable [sic] skirts'.

A return to the fray

Today is the Great St Wilfrid Handicap at Ripon

235 Newbury: Kite Wood
310 Newbury: Gallagher
325 Newmarket: Bounty Boy
355 Ripon: Striking Spirit

Goodwood: Stewards' Cup

230: Ashram
305: High Heeled
340: Buachaill Dona