One of the most useful, if often-overlooked, features of Google Book Search is the ability to enter your own books and create a personal library which you can then search if Google has scanned those books. (And chances are it probably has). If you are trying to find a passage or a factoid you once read but can’t remember the book no matter how hard you wrack your brain, the ability to search your personal library can come in handy. Except who wants to enter each book one at a time?
Now you can scan your books into your library on Google Book Search using a normal barcode scanner. I am not one hundred percent convinced that this is actually faster than simply typing in the title of the book and adding it to your library. It is faster than typing in the ISBN numbers, however, which is how Google Book Search handles mass imports.
But if we are willing to convert our entire CD collections to digital form, it is high time we started tackling our books. Right now, Google is merely matching your books with the books it has already digitized for search purposes only. But once they know what books you own in print, the next logical step is to sell you a digital version of the book and related books on the same topics or by the same author. Once Google collects a big enough book search history on you, it shouldn’t be too hard for them to recommend new books to you which are spot on. Knowing what books you’ve read, will certainly help them in that regard.
In the video below, Google’s Matt Cutts goes through the process of scanning your books into Google Book Search.
Given a barcode scanner like the one Matt Cutts uses is seen as a keyboard you can pretty much enter books this way in any site, like for example Bibale (http://www.bibale.com/).
The real plus would be for Google to offer you free access to the digital version by simply checking periodically that you still own the paper copy (by asking you for example to enter the Nth word of the Mth line on page P).
Google Is Evil, always violate someone else’ privacy.
Boycott Google !
Boycott Google !
Boycott Google !
At first I thought you meant scan each page in the book, that would be nuts. Don’t have a barcode scanner but would not mind paying for an organized digital version of what’s on my shelves.
Yeah I did too. But I thought “cool, they’re crowdsourcing book scanning!”…
It’s a great idea. Even better would be the ability to scan barcodes with the Mac iSight camera (or any other webcam). I’ve heard that Delicious Library does this.
But my ultimate fantasy would be to scan my books’ barcode and have it appear automagically in my Kindle.
Delicious Library does indeed scan bar codes using isight and add your media to your “Library”. (in addition to being able to enter tile or ISBN number).
Your proposition might happen if you bought the print edition from Amazon in the first place. no? Why would Amazon deliver you a digital copy if it did not make any money of your print purchase?
I wish google scan every page of every books and index them
Maybe Amazon could email its users all of the ISBN they have purchased, to speed up the process. Or even better, how about you take a photo of your book shelf. Upload it to a website, and then a program with Optical Character Recognition “OCR” would do the work for you. Based spine art of the books.
A great way to search for text if you have bought the audiobook and not the paper book. Thanks for the insightful post
Are we working at a grocery store or what? Price check, anybody?
@ Joey Mornin
I see what you did there. I lol’d.
One nice thing is that the Google Books team tweaked their web interface workflow to make entering a whole shelf of books very fast with the barcode scanner. For example, the ISBN entry is a textarea where you can enter multiple ISBN codes; you don’t have to confirm (or even press a button) after scanning the barcode for each book.
How about creating a mobile app like http://www.upcode.com/ that can scan barcodes with a mobile phone camera and then upload the isbn to Google… Maybe you could even buy http://www.upcode.com/ (the company) and save some time
Well,
why not ?` It is a great idea to make people find their favourite books at google.
But: Copyright Holders have to be asked if they want their books to be found at google. At least they have to permit that passages of their books can be found for a first impression.
Hey this is a good idea. But I fear for privacy.
wtf??
@mattcutts Actually the behaviour depends on the barcode scanner, some of them unfortunately do not issue an ENTER after the scanned code.
Good point. That’s why I mentioned the product I used (Adesso NuScan 1000)–I know that one works.
Music is much easier to transfer to digital format then books. With music there is no real advantage to having the actual CD. With a book it is an entirely different experience.
That’s a great idea, and I would love to see a similar type of function extend to albums and maybe even films over time.
The only pitfall is the barcode scanner. Am I the only one that doesn’t have a barcode scanner just kicking around at home. [Heads over to Amazon to look for one....]
I’ve already entered all my books into LibraryThing. If there’s a way to import that data into Google Books, I’m all for it. I would love to have all my books searchable.
Mario, http://www.libr...ndex.php/Export talks about how to export data from LibraryThing. Not sure if that includes ISBN numbers though.
Worked like a charm!!
This is interesting; I scan the barcodes of my books using my built-in iSight camera on my Mac using Delicious Library. I just exported all the ISBN numbers from Delicious into a text file, and imported that into Google Books…. worked perfectly, and all set up now.
Remember, though, that not every page of every book that Google has scanned is available…. but enough to make it useful.
test
FAIL
Two years ago this month I wrote an article suggesting that the iPhone should be able to read RFID tags (most bookstores attach them already) and then catalog your physical book collection. The objective being, so that you could do a digital search of the contents of your physical books.
http://tr.im/iphonebook
Google should let people retrieve this information from their LibraryThing account… oh, I see this is already being discussed above.
Hey wow, we do this and much much *much* more! Tons more. And why stop at books?
And yeah, it IS way faster to use a barcode scanner (I use a $10 cuecat) — when you’re first starting out.
But after you’ve got the bulk in, it’s easy to add individuals while you’re at the store buying it (our site has full mobile access).
And we already do the recommendation engine – it’s sweet since it filters out everything you already own (it even knows that if you own the Blu-ray or hardback, not to include the DVD or paperback), and generates it’s list off what you already own and like…and throws your wishlist items into the algorithm for good measure. We actually call it our “Gift List” since it’s used to find stuff to buy for other people (again, accessible while in-store), but you can also use it to find stuff for yourself. It’s super accurate.
Your site sucks… The mobile site says: This site is private, confidential, and the property of One Track Mine, Inc.. By using this, you agree to keep this private. (No thanks!)
It’s amazing how the world has changed. MP3.com got sued out of existence by Vivendi-Universal for this exact same kind of thing (you put a CD into your computer, it physically verified the presence of the disc and then gave you access to the MP3s online). Amazing what happens when Google does it, or how spineless (pun intended) the book publishers are compared to the RIAA.
So is there anyway to add books that don’t have ISBNs because they came out before ISBNs were common? Google Book Search certainly has enough books that fit that description.
Cool, that’s nearly the same as Beep My Stuff (http://www.beepmystuff.com) which I am working on. Nice to have some competition from the big boys
Beep My Stuff uses a USB web camera to scan barcodes.
excelent post
It works to use the Amazon iPhone app and Amazon Remembers and photograph the barcode with the iPhone (even with the lousy camera).
But certainly a clean Google App would be great -like the Tineye app for CD covers
Quite interesting; some points of possible interest:
LibraryThing sells a $15 barcode reader, plug and play into a USB port; it’s a social network for bibliophiles that provides online catalog data and cover image for most books that may also be of interest to this audience.
I’ve already scanned my collection to LibraryThing, and exporting my collection from there to a spreadsheet made a quick copy/paste process of the entering of ISBNs into the Google system; it found ~1050 of 1200 numbers in a few minutes work.
LibraryThing also searches by Library of Congress Number or simply subject and author for books without an ISBN, of which there are still many; I’ve yet to poke around Google to see whether this is possible on Google as well.
Why spend money on a barcode scanner when you can use your webcam. A friend of mine http://www.brendonwilson.com developed some software http://www.scannerfly.com that turns your webcam into a barcode scanner.
This practice makes me ill. Especially, for writers of fiction. Google is a bunch of art killers until proven otherwise. I loathe them.
Are you kidding me… who has time to do this?
I am using LibraryThing to provide on online catalog of all of my books. I have been keying in the titles, which is a little tedious, but “doable” for a few books a day. I have maybe 750 books, so it’s taking me a while. I hadn’t considered buying the Barcode scanner, but maybe I will.
LibraryThing fills in as much information in your book catalog record as it has, which reduces the amount of typing to just a little–as long as the book is known to it. It is supposed to interface to the Library of Congress (LOC) WEB-site, but this interface isn’t always reliable.
Thanks for the article, as I wasn’t aware of this capability of Google Search and will look into its use soon.
So, I go to the library w/ laptop and handheld scanner. I checkout (or take the from the shelves if they’re open stacks) the copyrighted books I DON’T have in my library, scan them into Google and Google thinks they’re now mine???
Its the Pirate Party in America! More genius from the Mtnview Monopoly….
I guess Google is also trying to reduce the likelihood that we just take any book in the library and claim them as ours by requiring the use of barcode scanners instead of just typing the barcodes in. Not a lot of us would actually have a barcode scanner. But the copyright issue should be addressed too. In the first place, Google scanning all the books is already a breach of copyright isn’t it?