Bookrape

One of the interesting emergent features of students' work at the moment is the prevalence of Google Books as a reference source. It's something we haven't addressed in any meaningful way yet, but it needs thinking about.

It's not plagiarism - the book is usually referenced, plus a weblink to the Google source. But I'm still agin' it. It's a matter of usage. Reading a book, for pleasure or enlightenment, is a commitment. You need to read it all, or a complete chapter. Academic work is rarely simple enough that a sentence can be read and quoted in isolation. Baudrillard's description of Disneyland as 'toxic excrement', for example, might seem like a glib soundbite extracted from a single page, but means something very different if you've read the whole essay.

Google Books facilitates this smash-and-grab approach: googling a phrase leads to a single page of a book. You then copy a sentence, note the page number and stick it in your essay - it now looks like you've read it.

Except: I can tell. When you've read a whole chapter, or book, you can summarise and argument and discuss it. The telltale sign of Google Books is the presence of a quote without discussion: it exists as an ! to 'prove' the essay writer's point. Formally, it's not cheating, but intellectually it is. It's the equivalent of sex with a prostitute - totally goal-oriented rather than an emotional experience. It's the offside goal: the ball's in the net but the spirit of the game has been ignored.

Google Books is great if you've read a book and can't find the exact location of something (as I've just done for the Baudrillard quote). But it's no replacement for slowly and thoughtfully absorbing and debating nuanced arguments. It's not a travel guide, it's an A-Z: there's no joyful journey. That said, it's perfect for the pedagogical climate in which we now exist.

Books and e-books

Authors in particular and theorists of the media are wondering what's going to happen to the printed word and authorial rights in the Information Age - especially as Google are digitising every book without permission from publishers and authors.

One of my favourite authors thinks she's cracked it. Gwyneth Jones is a literary, feminist, science fiction writer (she's up there with the top writers alive today, regardless of genre). She's releasing re-edited, director's cut-style versions of her books as PDFs on her website for free. She leaves a decent length of time for the physical books to sell, so has the best of both worlds.

Books won't die: you can hand them around, scribble on them, drop them, use them anywhere without power etc etc - but e-versions have their place, something she clearly recognises. What's really interesting is that it rebalances the relationship between author, publisher and public. We perhaps don't realise how many stages a book goes through, with the publisher making huge changes to make a text profitable - sometimes against and author's interests, sometimes providing valuable guidance and advice. Jones's approach makes the e-book a complementary exercise while providing her with the opportunity to present her texts the way she feels they should be. Now we just need an enthusiastic PhD student to compare the two versions…