NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2010 Aug 29, 18:43 -0700
George H wrote:
"That link also appears if I search on the
Google (not Google Books) web-page with "Maskelyne tables requisite 1781".
So why was advanced-search frustrating me? Any ideas?"
Yes. The search index at Google Books sucks. For another example, I know of no single search that will yield ALL of the available 19th century editions of Bowditch. They're scattered over many searches and listed under various closely related titles. In general, I have found that the fewest possible search terms, limited by date, yields better results. I suspect that the index for Google Books is based on OCR results for the book's title page. OCR is imperfect especially with old print, and the algorithms sometimes seem to have trouble deciding what the title page is, too. This is, in part, why I have been trying to keep an index of the old navigation books available online at the main page for NavList. Since they continue to add books, I need to update it again...
-FER
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