How to check it
Don't take the library on trust. Here is what it promises, what it doesn't, and how to check a quotation yourself.
How to check a quotation
- Find the reference (such as P1234500017) and the link that come with the quotation.
- Follow the link to where the library's copy came from, and find the words there.
- No reference or link? Ask your AI app where the words came from.
Do this before you print or preach a quotation.
What the library promises
- Quotations are word for word from the library's copy, with the author and title, and the year and page where the source gives them.
- Every quotation can be traced. Each result has a reference and a link to where the library's copy came from. Results from Internet Archive scans link to the page itself.
- It says when it has nothing. When the library doesn't have a book, or has nothing close, the connector says so and tells the AI not to fill the gap from memory. Each result is marked as an exact, close, partial or loose match.
- Scans are marked. Every passage from a scanned book is marked as uncorrected OCR: the computer's reading of the page, which may have wrong letters.
- Every book names its source and its license. Only public-domain and openly licensed works are included.
- Texts aren't modernized. The library doesn't modernize, correct or abridge what it copies. Some sources had already edited their editions; each file names its source, so you can see which edition you're reading.
What it can't promise
- The copies aren't perfect. Scanned books have misread letters, and some texts have no year or page numbers.
- Your AI app writes the answer. The connector finds and quotes. Your app (Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini) reads the passages and writes the answer, and it can summarize badly or quote from memory.
Where to look further
- How well it finds things: test results on a fixed set of questions, misses included.
- Corrections log: every error found and fixed.
- What happens to your question: everyone who sees it. The connector keeps no copy of your conversations or documents and doesn't log what you search for.
- The connector's code and its security review are public. The review was carried out with Claude, Anthropic's AI. No outside firm has audited it.
A personal project curated by Matt Miller. No ads, and no church or denomination directs or endorses it.