MARITIME HISTORY ON THE INTERNET by Peter McCracken
Using Google Books, HathiTrust, and other Online Book Sites
oogle's goal to digitize the world's libraries is one of its typical of their 53,000 titles are out of copyright. HathiTrust (https:// "shoot-for-the-moon" projects, which seem nearly impossible www.hathitrust.org) is a very large compiler of digital titles from Guntil they turn out to be well on their way to reaching the many sources, including Google Books, the Internet Archive, goal. Its impact is already immeasurable, and will continue to and Microsoft. HathiTrust has a number of particularly valuable grow. Nevertheless, the project is not without its challenges, and features: you can choose to either search the full text of the books there is much one should know about the process and alternatives. available, or search the catalog that describes the books. If you Begun in secret in 2002 and launched publically in 2004, the want to look for a broad topic, like "Australian schooners," you concept was something that Google's cofounders always planned might try searching the catalog to locate books on the subj ect. to pursue. The project had both altruistic and commercial aims: If you want to look something more specific, then searching the it has always had a goal of making out-of-prim resources available full text for, say, "Wollongong schooners" might be better. You to anyone, but also has involved direct work with publishers to can use AND and OR terms when searching, and * as a wildcard earn revenue when making publishers' content findable, if not ac (a search for "sail*" will return "sail," "sails," "sailors," "sailing," cessible. The addition oflibrary partners has greatly expanded the etc.), but there are few other advanced search functions. Most number ofout-of-copyright or out-of-prim books (and magazines!) importantly, if you can log in to HathiTrust as a member of a findable in Google Books. partner institution, you can then download PDFs of most titles, Results from Google Books will appear in a standard Google or create collections of specific books, across which you can then search, and you can separate them out by clicking on "Books," search within that collection. between the search box and the results. (Sometimes, "Books" In fact, HathiTrust is often a better option than Google Books. appears on the dropdown "More" menu.) You can also start your Google makes blanket decisions about book access, while Ha search at https://books.google.com to thiTrust has a collection oflibrarian volunteers limit the initial search to books. There working to investigate and determine copyright are two types ofresults: snippet view and 495 whenever possible. For example, Google Books ----- full view. In the latter case, yo u can see ,_ will only show snippets of Naval Documents ------·-·--- 133 ...... 12 ...... 130, !
------116,117 visible, or a few pages here and there -·············-··-·- 9S recognize that since the set was published by ······· ·····------87 ------89 will be missing. This is for copyright ------322 the US Government, it is thus not protected 1~------209 ------399 reaso ns, not because Google skipped ------378 by copyright. It just sees a date later than 1922, ·------136, 322 ------322 some pages. In snippet view, Google ------:,,'{Jg and assumes it's in copyright. HathiTrust, on ,.. __------______3'22437
has scanned the entire book but can ------· · ········---31 1,373 the other hand, will allow you to view the '----- · - -················ SD ------448 tide, and if you're at one of the more than only show small portions of the text 11~.. ------64 re l. ••••• ••••••• • •••• ••• •••• 322 t. followfld ______Iii 100 partner libraries, you can download every because copyright owners have required ------i4f 200 ~ 2of 26a. :z11 ------ass that they not share the complete text, ------······- 240 volume. (In this case, you can also download ------· 3S8 or even large portions of it. '"······ ·············...... 388 these tides from the nascent American Naval -~~B.19;~;.-_::::::::::::::.~67, i~ Google Books is not without prob 1'11, Muter...... 388 Records Society, at http://www.ibiblio.org/ ------388 .vmond--- -·-···············--·· 388 lems. The OCR (Optical Character ..m. U.S. S. anrs/quasi.html.) lllhiiifm /Ind PruUPI ___ •....•.... 136, 322 ~------4.24 Recognition) text conversion has been ·------456 Sometimes, there's nothing li ke having a ...... abip ______Loti1i• ------______------·---- 410383
problematic, at times. Try searching ------3g1 prim copy of a tide. Used booksellers, such as 397 for "modem" in 19'h-century tides, "' ABE Books (https://www.abebooks.com), ""262 for instance-these will nearly always 256 are often your best bet. Amazon.com is a be a poorly interpreted version of the "'181 frustrating option, because most options come "'322 ------31}2 ------136,3'22 from vendors who will simply pass on the order word "modern." In addition, the meta ------v, 199 ------386 data-the information describing each ------256 to a prim-on-demand publisher, who will print tide-is sometimes incorrect, making a copy of the Google Books version, errors and it hard to find some items, particularly all. When looking at purchasing options on volumes in a series, like the Navy Records Society volumes. Google used-book websites, be careful what you select. Some sellers will uses high-volume, large-scale workflows, and correcting errors include images of the actual copy you're buying, so you'll know it's here and there is generally not worth their time. Occasionally, original, but if the listed publisher is a university or a library, that's the scans will show pages in the process of being turned, like this metadara taken straight from Google, and you'll almost certainly example I found last year. receive a prim-on-demand copy of the Google scan. Other digitization projects certainly exist. Project Gutenberg Suggestions for other sites worth mentioning are welcome at (https://www.gutenberg.org) was started in 1971 (really!); text [email protected]. See www.shipindex.org for a free compila was manually keyed in until 1989, when scanners began being tion of over 150,000 ship names from indexes to dozens of books used. Each tide is available in multiple formats, and nearly all and journals. J, 50 SEA HISTORY 158, SPRING 2017