If I had any doubts that the Books in Browsers conference in San Francisco last week was going to be an unforgettable pow-wow of book people, they were quickly erased at the very outset of the first presentation, Allen Noren’s keynote on Thursday morning, in which he gave an introduction to the themes of the conference.
Noren (@allennoren), the Director of Online Marketing at O’Reilly Media, talked about Web experiences he’s had recently that hint at the changing role of traditional books as they relate to the Web. His first example was the About this Book page in Google Book Search. Using the example of Moby Dick (at left), he noted that this contains a wealth of information about book titles, and commented that he was surprised that hardly anyone seems to notice it and talk about its value — The first time that day that what I heard GRABBED MY ATTENTION, since I wrote in much the same vein two years ago around the subject of the unheeded goodies on the GBS About this Book page (although I was emphasizing its value for seeing thumbnails of pictures).
So, yes, Noren has FOUND THE GOLD! And, why, indeed, has the GBS About this Book gotten so little attention? It’s true, as I discussed with Noren after his presentation, that Google itself doesn’t feature the About this Book page, with Google searches generally linking to the Front Cover view, which is probably seen as being more appealing to the general public. But librarians and other meta-ish people should certainly appreciate its value, a sort of Web-enhanced “card-catalog” view of a book, as I observed in my earlier article.
So, I tuck Noren’s words away for further processing later … on with the day’s engrossing talks … The last keynote of the day — Context First, by Brian O’Leary (@brianoleary) — certainly grabbed everyone’s attention (by my count, at the end of the first day, it was tweeted about five times more than any other talk). In eloquent words accompanied by superb graphics, O’Leary contrasted the “container view” of the traditional print book and the “context view,” that’s made possible by digital books — So, another great talk, much to consider, but on to the evening’s equally riveting activities. …
It wasn’t until later, on my red-eye flight home, in mulling things over — I see — YES — Noren and O’Leary are talking about the same thing! — The GBS About this Book page is a prime example of Giving Context to Digital Books — Putting [meta] data from the text of the book together with data from the Web to give insights about how the book fits into context of the Web and the world beyond the “container of the book” — Giving life to the Salman Rushdie-ish Streams of Story, as O’Leary suggests in his conclusion, and as I’ve blogged about.
Eric Rumsey is at: eric-rumseytemp AttSign uiowa dott edu and on Twitter @ericrumseytemp
I agree that Allen started a conversation that I was happy to pick up (along with others) in the afternoon. One of the great things about the “Books in Browsers” conference was its adept cascade of related and inter-related ideas. I’m still thinking about much of what I heard. Kudos to the Internet Archive and in particular the program organizers, led by Peter Brantley.
again with the rushdie stuff?
i’m still not buying it, eric…
(but i see now that you had
replied to my post over there,
so i’ll go reply to your reply.)
and yes, you’re right about
the richness of the google
“about this book” page, but
some of us have seen that
for a very long time now…
it’s funny how some people
think something is “ignored”
just because _they_ haven’t
paid any attention to it, or
listened to people who have.
i mean, really, i can walk y’all
through the various sections
of the “about” page, reporting
who has discussed it before,
if you really want to do that.
as you note, you were in this
neck of the woods 2 years ago.
it’s a pity you weren’t giving
keynotes back in 2008, eh?
-bowerbird
Links to GBS “About this Book” discussions would be good – I’d be interested in whatever you have.
Thanks for the comment.
–Eric
Eric, I was thinking the same thing about Google Books as I followed the conference last week via tweets and as I later read/watched presentations as they got posted (those that were, anyway).
Do you follow the @googlebooks tweets? I think they actually do a great job of highlighting the power of what they have, mostly by quirky but illustrative examples. After following a few of their links, I think you see the leading edge if not more of what Brian as well as Hugh McGuire, Kevin Kelly and others have been outlining coming to life.
Yes, @googlebooks — sort of a quote a day from a book in Google Books — is a good idea. I’m surprised that I rarely see scholarly people making links like that to passages they cite — I’d expect Wikipedia writers to be early ones to pick up on this, but I rarely see it.
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