Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Scholarship in Google Books

A large number of important scholarly works are emerging from the Google Books digitization effort. Many of these are in satisfactory and readable states, others are not. Descriptive metadata is variable - from mediocre to poor, on the whole.

About eighty volumes published by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens are available at the moment in full view.

Scholars and librarians are working to document interesting setas of materuial published in Google Books. Mische Hooker of the University of Cincinnati, for example, is compiling a classified bibliography of BIBLE, JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY via Google Book Search. The Patristics/ Early Christianity section is particularly rich, including much of Migne, Patrologia Graeca and Patrologia Latina; Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae; and a broad selection of other materials.