Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
(sigh)
I wish I could be happier about this announcement, but the fact is, that they are using the unproofed and uncorrected Google OCR material does not make me happy. Sony especially should be concerned enough about their rep to want to offer only the best material... and giving the public texts that look like they were typed by flying monkeys on acid is no way to do that.
If their source material was any better, I'd consider collecting and reading from their library, too. But when you risk running into words, sentences and entire sections that are unreadable, and can potentially alter the meaning of entire portions of a book, I don't consider it worth the trouble.
Somebody call me when they've gone and corrected that material. Until then: Pass.
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I agree with you 99%. My 1% exception, which is not in disagreement, but in partial acceptance of the poor quality, is this:
I was very excited when I first read the OP. I immediately downloaded a book published in 1813 that I’ve wanted for years. Although I found many mistakes due to the rendering of the OCR software, I nonetheless was thrilled that I had a copy to read on my Reader. Until now I could only read it on my computer screen because of Google Book’s previous PDF format (which was actually individual jpg pages that wouldn’t render on the Reader.) Acquiring a hard copy was not even an option. This is an obscure book of memoirs of one of my ancestors, therefore would never become a mainstream electronic book of interest to the masses. There are many other obscure books of this nature which would never be considered classics in the accepted sense, yet are precious reads to me, poor formatting, warts and all. I, for one, happily accept these offerings as they currently exist, while at the same time hope that these books will be cleaned up and more readily readable in the near future.