Reporting problems with Google Books

By Jayne Dickson, CDL Helpline Manager

The Google Books Search feature, which allows users to find books digitized by the University of California and other Google Books partners, is now available in the Melvyl Catalog and the campus WorldCat Local (WCL) implementations.  Depending on the copyright status of the book, Google will return a full text view, a limited preview, a snippet, or a record view.

Occasionally, book links in the catalog records link incorrectly to another book. For example, the link for the Albert L. Lehninger’s book titled “Short course in biochemistry” links incorrectly to “Ifadat va malfuzat-i Hazrat Maulana ‘Ubaidullah Sindhi” by Muhammad Sarvar, ‘Ubaidullah Sindhi via the Google Books Search API.

The best way to report these mis-links and other problems with the Google Books content is to use the Melvyl Catalog and/or Next Generation Melvyl WorldCat Local (WCL) implementation feedback links (located at the bottom of the web page) to report the problem to CDL. Be sure to include the book’s citation information along with a brief description of what was wrong (e.g., mis-links, digitized content missing pages, etc.).

CDL investigates the reported problems and then forwards these on to the appropriate entities, including Google.