O'Reilly's discussion of the Amazon.com database as "a reference source for scholars and librarians" really hit home with me (10). When I worked as a copy editor, one of my main duties was to double check references that authors cited and provide any information that they may have left out. This often required the I search for chapter titles of books on veterinary topics I had never heard of. The Library of Congress card catalog was described as the authority in the style manual I was forced to follow, but they rarely had any of the information in their database that I was looking for. More often than not, I turned to Amazon.com when trying to complete book references. In fact, I was told to do this during my training. I find it amazing how the very professional not-for-profit organization that I was working for was having me turn to a commercial web site for citation information.
Just lower on page 10 of O'Reilly's essay, he discusses Google Maps mashups. Just last year I found this site, which uses Google Maps as a virtual pedometer. Instead of buying and calibrating a pedometer that most likely doesn't keep accurate count of your steps, you can simply use this hacked map. Pretty snazzy.
2 comments:
That's a pretty awesome use of Amazon.
I did a similar thing for my Bibliography & Methods of Research class last year. The "Search Inside This Book!" feature is really great since you can browse TOC, doublecheck copyright information, etc.
But this dependency on corporations to provide this information bugs me a little. Not that I anticipate Amazon charging for this information, but still. I hope O'Reilly is right about the Free Data movement.
Totally agree about Amazon - Search Inside the Book. For Dr. Gorman's bibliography class I used that a lot. However, it's not always right - and not always provided.
The NIU library provides a lot of this info too (publisher, author, year).
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