Fingernails on Google Book scans?
Digitization 101: How is Google’s digitization quality?
How is Google’s digitization quality?
When Google announced its project nearly a year ago, I was anxious to hear how they were going to digitize the materials. I soon realized that confidentiality agreements and the air of secrecy was going to keep me (and you) from learning from this project. I know that we’ll learn more about copyright because of Google’s work, but would it be wonderful to learn more about how they are going about this effort? Even just some tidbits?We can learn a bit from looking at the books that Google has digitized. And what we learn is that their quality isn’t all good. If you search through the materials, you’ll find items were the images are very crisp and clear, and others that are blurry and (perhaps) sloppily done.
For example, if you flip through this book (from 1908 and in the public domain), you’ll see a fingernail, book clamps, obscured pages, pages missing (p. 61), and pages that are crocked. And nearly every page is hard to read. Is this an anomaly? No. Look at this book (from 1916 and in the public domain) and you’ll see brown pages (p. 22). What’s up with that?!
Without signing in, you can only see a few pages of the newer books. Even without signing in, one quickly senses that the pages are clearer and much easier to read. (Look at this example from 2004.) Is Google doing something different with these so that they are scanned better?
Not necessarily. The cover of my newly scanned book has visible scan lines. Irritating because they are working from my PDF!
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