{"id":344,"date":"2014-05-03T21:30:12","date_gmt":"2014-05-04T01:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/?p=344"},"modified":"2014-05-04T00:42:20","modified_gmt":"2014-05-04T04:42:20","slug":"more-google-books-ocr-errors-of-arms-and-the-anus-we-scan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/?p=344","title":{"rendered":"More Google Books OCR errors: Of Arms and the Anus"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re a little sensitive to NSFW language, you might stop now. Apparently a number of otherwise innocent books are recognizing “arms” as “anus.”The romance blogger Sarah Wendell, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books<\/a> (direct links don’t seem to work) pointed out the OCR problem in a tweet<\/a> (“So if the text is old, and it says ‘arms’, the OCR scanner will see it as ‘anus.’ OMG,”).<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em>‘s Alison Flood<\/a> picked up the story on May 1, 2014 and compiled some of the more… disturbing errors, and then Googled the phrase “ “wound her anus”<\/a> through Google Book Search” and turned up “a wealth of other examples.”<\/p>\n

At Melville House, director of marketing Zeljka Marosevic<\/a> quotes the Guardian piece and remarks, “Parents should keep their children away from the ebook edition of the 1882 children\u2019s book Sunday Reading From the Young<\/em>. It all seems perfectly innocent until\u2026 \u201cLittle Milly<\/strong> wound her anus lovingly around Mrs Green\u2019s<\/strong> neck and begged her to make her home with them. At first Mrs Green hesitated.\u201d That\u2019s technology for you, always making an ass out of someone.”<\/p>\n

Mainstream blogger Andrew Sullivan<\/a> picked up the story on May 3, with an elbow and a** headline, so the story may gain some traction as odd-ball news. Yes, this finding is amusing because it is so egregious and transgressive, but it won’t really change the fact that automated OCR has a history of trouble with pre-twentieth century typefaces and printing. Nineteenth century book printing should not produce such a problem. (Arguably, nineteenth century newspapers might require more human intervention; I don’t think they are so easily scanned.) Eventually Google may seek to fix these errors because of the publicity, but I wonder how similar errors like this one have affected research by digital humanists now and in the future.<\/p>\n

(hat tip: Andrew Sullivan<\/a>)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re a little sensitive to NSFW language, you might stop now. Apparently a number of otherwise innocent books are recognizing “arms” as “anus.”The romance blogger Sarah Wendell, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (direct links don’t seem to work) pointed out the OCR problem in a tweet (“So if the text is old, and it says… Continue reading More Google Books OCR errors: Of Arms and the Anus<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[286,277,285,287,278],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-book","tag-errors","tag-google-books","tag-ocr","tag-optical-character-recognition","tag-scanning","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":350,"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions\/350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}