More on Google Books

24 August 2010

[Actually, this is a year-old article—which explains why “there is little new” in it. I mentioned it a year ago. --DW, 8/27]

It’s been a while since I’ve posted or linked to a post about the problems with Google Books. But here’s an article on the topic by Geoffrey Nunberg. For those that are familiar with the topic, there is little new in this article, but the parade of errors in the metadata is humorous, if nothing else. And this conclusion of Nunberg’s is spot on:

In short, Google has taken a group of the world’s great research collections and returned them in the form of a suburban-mall bookstore.

While I share many of Nunberg’s complaints, I don’t share the sentiment in the title that Google Books is a “disaster.” On balance, Google Books is an invaluable resource. Yes, Google has gotten a lot of things wrong, and those errors severely limit the utility of the digital library, but the benefits of ready access to the truly vast number of books outweighs the problems with the system.

(Hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily)

A Couple of Links About Copyright

21 August 2010

The Arts and Letters Daily blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education is really a must-have for your RSS feed. Today, it features two articles of note about copyright.

The first is an article in Der Spiegel Online about a hypothesis by historian Eckhard Höffner that contends Germany’s economic and industrial expansion in the nineteenth century was largely the result of the country not having a copyright law. While I’m skeptical of this rather strong contention, I have no doubt that the free exchange of ideas does lead to economic and technological progress and that can be strangled when ideas are given too limited a circulation. In this case I think the problem in England, to which Höffner compares Germany, was not so much the copyright law, but the business models of the publishers that limited the free flow of ideas.

The second is a very creative, graphical review by cartoonist Ward Sutton of Lewis Hyde’s new book, Common as Air. Hyde’s book takes on what is perceived by many to be abuses of copyright law in contemporary American society. Evidently, Sutton regularly produces graphical reviews for Barnesandnoble.com. 

Jack London Biography

15 August 2010

Johann Hari has a review of a new biography of Jack London in Slate.

London may be my favorite writer. His prose style is terse, yet evocative (and can’t be easily parodied like that of his imitator Hemingway), and unlike many of his nineteenth-century predecessors remains accessible and readable today. Yet he was an enormously complex, and in some respects despicable, human being.

One of the reasons I may like London so much is that, unlike most kids, I was not assigned his works in middle or high school. (I read the short story “To Build a Fire” in school,” that’s all.) I discovered his work as an adult. I object to the characterization of his most famous work, The Call of the Wild, as “a dog story.” Yes, many consider it that, probably because they last read it in eighth grade, at an age where they could not truly appreciate its themes. But calling it “a dog story” is like calling Huckleberry Finn “a boy’s adventure novel.” It is a complex tale that highlights how thin the veneer of civilization is in us all. And the prose is just glorious to read. I’m all for exposing children to great literature at a young age, but in so doing we should be careful not to pigeonhole those works as children’s literature.

First English Dictionary of Slang

15 August 2010

The Bodleian Library is reprinting (I didn’t know they had a publishing imprint) a 1699 dictionary of slang, the earliest known dictionary of English slang. Earlier vocabulary lists of slang, or cant as the word slang does not appear until the mid-eighteenth century, exist, but they are part of larger works. This is the first stand-alone dictionary of slang. The dictionary was compiled by a gentleman known only by his initials, B.E.

Some sample entries from the Bodleian’s press release:

  • Anglers, c. Cheats, petty Thieves, who have a Stick with a hook at the end, with which they pluck things out of Windows, Grates, &c. also those that draw in People to be cheated.

  • Cackling-farts, c. Eggs.

  • Keeping Cully, one that Maintains a Mistress, and parts with his Money very generously to her.

  • Mawdlin, weepingly Drunk.

  • Mutton-in-long-coats, Women. A Leg of Mutton in a Silk-Stocking, a Woman’s Leg.

  • One of my Cosens, a Wench

This is a welcome edition of an often forgotten classic, and at a very reasonable price.

(As soon as I saw the notice, I checked the Early English Books Online database, which I know have access to via the University of Toronto library. And sure enough, the 1699 edition is in there. I’m going to like being at a university that gives me off-campus access to its resources—I’m looking at you, UC Berkeley, and not in a good way. Since I’ve got an electronic version, I probably won’t be running out and purchasing this print edition—not only am I now on a grad student’s budget, but now that I’ve slimmed down my print library to a manageable size, I’m not looking to expand it unnecessarily. But I encourage others to get it if they’re so inclined.)

(Hat tip to languagehat.)