So Google launched Google Print, its searchable book database, much to the chagrin evidently of anybody who works in the publishing industry. I'm going to leave legality of the venture, which is certainly questionable, to people way smarter than I to debate (Here's a great Pro-Google argument, with some solid Anti-Google arguments in the comments. Go crazy).
I would just like to say, for the record, in my professional opinion, that Google Print is super cool.
Here's what I want, though: There needs to be some way to tie relevancy to the search based on the recognition or popularity of the source. Say, for example, you remember a snippet of poetry that begins with "I think that I shall never see" and type it into Google to find it in print. Here are the first five results you'll get in order:
- Page 132 of Dangerous Liasons - "When I think that I shall never see Danceny again I could die."
- Encarta Book of Quotations - Quotes two lines of the Joyce Kilmer Poem "I think that I shall never see; a poem as lovely as a tree."
- Page 125 of The Man I Might Become: Gay Men Write About Their Fathers - "I think that I shall never see / a boy as lovely as S.T."
- Page 75 of A Great Plains Reader, excerpting The Rites of Autumn - "I had rewritten Joyce Kilmer's line in my mind. 'I think that I shall never see, the other side of a tree.' "
- Page 66 of Pop Art: A Critical History - "There is an Ogden Nash quatrain that I feel is apposite: I think that I shall never see / a billboard lovely as a tree."
Sure, number 2 is close, but you have to go to the 9th selection on Google's list to get the full poem by Joyce Kilmer. And I am perhaps making an assumption here, but it is my firm belief that most people are not thinking of page 132 of Dangerous Liaisons when there hear the line "I think that I shall never see."
Give the searchers some way to vote on relevancy after the sought after text has been located. Have those votes factored into future search results. This is a beta, and I'd be more than willing to help seed the votes in exchange for access to this much fantastic information.
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