As millions of pages are rapidly scanned into Google Books and made searchable to the public, interesting anomalies occur—the physical book’s history, such as tobacco stains or handwritten notes, end up being preserved online, along with glitches that occur during the scanning process, like the hand of the scanner operator covering a page. These “mistakes” have been collected in Tumblrs, used in new media art work, and also raise thought-provoking questions regarding the politics and class factors behind data entry.
The Artful Accidents of Google Books