While Google Maps with Street View has been known to photograph things that are out of the ordinary, Google Books isn’t something you’d think capable of doing the same. The Art of Google Books by Krissy Wilson aims to “recognize book digitization as re-photography, and to value the signs of use that accompany these texts as worthy of documentation and study.” Check out some of the inadvertent artwork from Google Books, including crinkled pages, library-book checkout stamps, marginalia, and more.
Cobwebs to Catch Flies: or Dialogues in Short Sentences, Adapted to Children by Eleanor Fenn (1885)
The Modern British Drama: In Five Volumes, v. 4 by Sir Walter Scott (1811)
The Edinburgh Encyclopædia Conducted by David Brewster, with the Assistance of Gentlemen Eminent in Science and Literature, v. 8 (1832)
Pyritologia: or, A History of the Pyrites, the Principal Body of the Mineral Kingdom by Johann Friedrich Henckel (1757)
The Paradise of Coquettes by Thomas Brown (1817)
The Gentleman’s Calling by Browne Willis (1668)
Ethica Christiana or The School of Wisdom by Jean Puget de la Serre (1664)
Early Schools and School-books of New England by George Emery Littlefield (1904)
Practical Observations on the Causes and Treatment of Curvatures of the Spine by Samuel Hare (1838)
Dictionary of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences, According to the Latest Improvements and Discoveries (1823)