Thursday, the University Library Committee meeting was devoted to a presentation about Google Book Search by Frances Haugen, who works at Google in the area of search quality and how to expose content from books.
Google is very interested in applications of book search and their other tools for education, and there are some interesting hybrid applications that I wasn’t aware of previously. From my notes (haven’t tried these yet, so I’m sure some of them need clarification):
“Google tools can be used for collaboration, research projects, real-time feedback on essays, peer editing, cooperative note-taking, and online assignment submission. Examples of applications for education:
- Can take a quote from a primary source document and do a book search for books that include/discuss quote and context around it.
- Can use publication date in book search: “War date:1861-1865”
- Can highlight part of the book (public domain content), create a document and paste in the link to bring in image from book / snippet.
- Can compose course packs
- Can share a “library”, labels & reviews.
Clearly, many of these have enormous potential for teaching and learning in general and especially information literacy. I’m curious how people are using Google book search and apps in their information literacy programs. Our Google workshop working group has thought about devoting more time to Google apps, and this seems like a great idea, particularly if there are materials already out there.
