Seeing the picture » Magazines http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd Thoughts while working on Hardin MD on digitization & libraries Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:16:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5.2 en hourly 1 Google Magazines – Top 20 Titles http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/11/17/google-magazines-top-20-titles/ http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/11/17/google-magazines-top-20-titles/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:53:14 +0000 Eric Rumsey http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/?p=4716 This is a subset of my list that has all titles as of November, 2009, when Google announced that they would provide their own list. The titles below are my subjective picks, based on generality of interest and/or length of availability.

Eric Rumsey is at: eric-rumsey AttSign uiowa dott edu and on Twitter @ericrumsey

]]> http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/11/17/google-magazines-top-20-titles/feed/ 0 Steve Jobs’ Legacy: To Save Publishing with the Tablet? http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/11/06/steve-jobs%e2%80%99-legacy-to-save-publishing-with-the-tablet/ http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/11/06/steve-jobs%e2%80%99-legacy-to-save-publishing-with-the-tablet/#comments Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:56:53 +0000 Eric Rumsey http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/?p=4647 John C. Abell, in his recent Wired article Steve Jobs’ Legacy Is the Missing Clue to the Apple Tablet, suggests that in the same way that he invigorated animated film with Pixar, the music industry with iTunes, and the mobile phone market with the iPhone, Jobs’ next mission is to invigorate the publishing industry with the Tablet. Abell talks specifically about the newspaper and magazine publishing industry, but his comments, I think, can easily be broadened to books also, as he talks about making readers forget about the printed page. I’m excerpting here because the words about publishing may be missed by many readers — Short excerpts, but with considerably more valuable nuggets than will fit into a 140-char Tweet:

If he is looking for One Last Thing, saving journalism would be the Holy Grail. … The device will have to make readers forget — really forget — the printed page. E-readers, for all that they do, don’t do this yet.

After detailing Jobs’ accomplishments in invigorating other industries, as mentioned above, Abell concludes with these words:

Even given this track record — and what we choose to believe is the all-trumping motivator of perfecting his legacy — a device-centric initiative that saves newspapers and magazines that seem to be in perpetual, some say irretrievable, decline, sounds next to impossible.

But is anybody seriously willing to bet against the house — of Jobs?

Eric Rumsey is at: eric-rumsey AttSign uiowa dott edu and on Twitter @ericrumsey

]]> http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/11/06/steve-jobs%e2%80%99-legacy-to-save-publishing-with-the-tablet/feed/ 0 Google Book Search: Thumbnails http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/07/08/google-book-search-thumbnails/ http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/07/08/google-book-search-thumbnails/#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:49:38 +0000 Eric Rumsey http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/?p=3296 The recently announced addition of thumbnail navigation to Google Book Search is, unfortunately, only available for full-view. But all magazines in GBS are full-view, so thumbnails are especially useful for them, since [because] they have so many pictures. To use thumnails, go to Read this Magazine (or Book), and click the 4-square grid in the top row of icons (shaded below).

There are relatively few public-domain, full-view books with pictures in GBS, but thumbnail view is valuable for them, to get a quick overview of the proportion and nature of the pictures, as shown in the example below.

]]> http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/07/08/google-book-search-thumbnails/feed/ 0 Google Magazines – Put New Titles in Twitter http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/04/10/google-magazines-put-new-titles-in-twitter/ http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/04/10/google-magazines-put-new-titles-in-twitter/#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:38:53 +0000 Eric Rumsey http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/?p=2387 In Dec, 2008, Google announced that they had begun adding recent popular magazines to Google Book Search. Because Google, inexplicably, chose not to provide a list of titles that were included, I made a list of about 40 titles, and until recently I hadn’t added to it, assuming that Google hadn’t added any more titles, since none had appeared on the Google Book Search home page. Recently, though, I saw in Twitter that people were mentioning new titles, so I did some searching to see if I could find more. And indeed, I did find about 10 new titles that have apparently been added recently, and I’ve added these to the list at Google Magazines – Titles.

A suggestion: If you find an interesting new magazine title in Google Book Search, put it in Twitter, and include the hashtag that I just created, #gbsmag (Clicking this will retrieve tweets in Twitter Search, with examples from the new titles I recently found). If you don’t use Twitter, of course, feel free to put new magazine titles in a comment to this article.

]]> http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/04/10/google-magazines-put-new-titles-in-twitter/feed/ 0 Google: Pictures, pictures, everywhere! http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/02/03/google-pictures-pictures-everywhere/ http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/02/03/google-pictures-pictures-everywhere/#comments Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:01:26 +0000 Eric Rumsey http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/?p=1855 Adam Hodgkin, in Google Pictures and Google Books, wonders why Google has chosen to put Prado paintings in Google Earth rather than in Google Images. In December I asked a similar question about Google’s putting Life Magazine pictures in Google Images, but putting other picture-laden magazines in Google Books. And, in another recent launch they’ve put newspapers, which also have many pictures, in Google News.

Once again I come back to the theme of this blog — Pictures are just different — They don’t fit neatly into our categories. Pictures are an important part of several different media — books, magazines, newspapers, and (of course) art — So what slot do we put them in?

Even before the recent questions arose with Life Magazine pictures, Google Magazines, Google Newspapers, and Prado paintings, there’s the ongoing, but little-noted question of pictures in the growing collection of public domain books in Google Books. In my experience, these are completely absent from Google Image Search — When will Google make this connection?

Figuring out what category to put them into, of course, is a relatively minor problem compared to the BIG PROBLEM with pictures, which is making them searchable! If there was one category to put them into that was searchable, then of course that would be the place for Google to put them!

]]> http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/02/03/google-pictures-pictures-everywhere/feed/ 0 Google Books: Magazines & Journals http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/01/06/google-books-magazines-journals/ http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/01/06/google-books-magazines-journals/#comments Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:50:39 +0000 Eric Rumsey http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/?p=1624 DjVu

A month ago, Google announced that it has begun putting magazines in Google Books. In one way, this is a new direction for Google. But looked at broadly, it’s really not so new — Google has been putting old journals in Google Books for a long time. The basic difference between the newly announced “Google magazines” and Google’s “old journals,” of course, is the date of publication — The titles that are being treated as “magazines” are generally published in the last 50 years or so. But some of these also include much older issues, in some cases, such as Popular Science, going back to the 1800’s. A bit of digging — searching for words in an article — finds a nice case of a title that’s in Google Books both ways, as a magazine and as an old journal. Snippets from the “About this book” and “About this magazine” pages below show differences.

Old journals – The journal / book format

Old journals are given the same treatment as books, with each volume of the journal being considered a book. The record here is for volume 26 of Popular Science Monthly (the old name of Popular Science).

Old journals are scanned into Google Books by libraries, in the case shown here, Harvard University. As with other books scanned by libraries, the About page has a selection of thumbnail images, giving an idea of what sort of graphics are in the book. Also note the button to Download the entire volume in PDF format.

The Magazine format

In contrast to journal/book format, in which the volume (made up of several issues) is treated as the basic record unit, in magazines, the basic record unit is the issue. This record is for the Feb 1885 issue of Popular Science.

Comparing this with the journal/book format, this lacks thumbnail preview images and it also does not support downloading a PDF of the issue. It does, however, have the great advantage over the journal/book format, that all issues are connected in the Browse all issues menu.

]]> http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/01/06/google-books-magazines-journals/feed/ 2 Google Magazines – Books or Images? http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2008/12/11/google-magazines-books-or-images/ http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2008/12/11/google-magazines-books-or-images/#comments Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:41:58 +0000 Eric Rumsey http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/?p=1306 Until now, books with pictures, especially color pictures, have been a relatively small part of Google Books. But the addition of highly visual, popular magazines changes this — The titles added so far are filled with pictures!

On one level, more pictures in Google Books is gratifying — a theme of this blog! But the navigation/search capabilities for finding these pictures is limited. The best way seems to be to use Advanced Search and limit the search to Magazines. But the results listing for this is text-only. It would be much easier to search for pictures with the sort of thumbnail search results interface that’s used in Google Image Search.

In light of the launching of picture-laden magazines as part of Google Books, it’s interesting to note that only last month, Google launched Life magazine pictures, as part of Google Image Search. Google is facing the same choice that librarians have been considering for the last while — Should books (or magazines) that have many pictures be considered mainly as books that happen to have pictures, or as pictures that happen to be in books?

The pictures & links below are from magazines that are in Google Books. I’ve chosen them because I know from work on Hardin MD that they are on highly-searched subjects, which would likely appear in Google Image Search if they were crawlable.

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]]> http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2008/12/11/google-magazines-books-or-images/feed/ 3 Google Magazines – Titles http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2008/12/10/google-magazines-titles/ http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2008/12/10/google-magazines-titles/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:08:22 +0000 Eric Rumsey http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/?p=1264 Google Books - Magazines

When I started this list in Dec, 2008, Google did not provide a list of their own — Thankfully, they provided one in Nov, 2009 (their announcement is Here, their list is Here). Assuming they keep up their list, I will probably not add to the list provided here. Comparing their list with mine now (11/12/09), they have everything on my list except one title (Log home living). Good start, Google, Hope you keep it up :-)

Please note: the dates given for titles is not necessarily inclusive! Some are quite spotty.

Eric Rumsey is at: eric-rumsey AttSign uiowa dott edu and on Twitter @ericrumsey

]]> http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2008/12/10/google-magazines-titles/feed/ 9 Google Maps, zKimmer, & Google Books http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2008/09/26/google-maps-zkimmer-google-books/ http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2008/09/26/google-maps-zkimmer-google-books/#comments Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:40:42 +0000 Eric Rumsey http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/?p=622 Maps and newspapers, because they’re rich in graphic information, benefit greatly from a zooming and panning interface. Text-only books, because they’re more linear and because text is easily searchable, don’t benefit from this sort of interface as much, but books with pictures certainly do.

zKimmer.com has recently implemented Google Maps technology for viewing non-map text and picture resources, such as magazines and newspapers, which are converted from PDF format. This is an exciting development especially because it holds promise that the same sort of technology could also be used for books.

With Google’s great success using a zooming-panning interface in Google Maps, and having recently launched Google Newspapers which also uses it, the question naturally occurs — Will Google developers sooner or later also use it for Google Books?

The zKimmer screen-shots above are from a magazine (though they could easily be from a book) and those below are from a newspaper. They both show how this interface facilitates navigating a resource that includes extensive pictures as well as text.

zKimmer lacks a good search capability (it has a search box, but it doesn’t seem to work) — So it’s not ready for heavy-duty enterprise use — It’s exciting, though, because it shows the potential value of a zooming-panning interface for books. Google Books already uses panning and zooming in a limited way, for navigating between pages, but a multi-page pan and zoom, as in zKimmer, would greatly simplify picture and text navigation.

Other implementations of the Google Maps API for non-map graphic resources are a desktop collection of elegant books by the reclusive German techno-artist Markus Dressen, and a card set from the World Of Warcraft.

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