- From Google: "Search the full text of books to find ones that interest you and learn where to buy or borrow them."
- From Wikipedia: "Google Book Search is a tool from Google that searches the full text of books that Google scans and stores in its digital database."
What you get:
- About the book with basic bibliographic material like title, author, date, length and subject (doesn’t have place of publication).
- Maybe key terms, references, contents, chapter titles.
- Always links to bookstores and libraries
Four Views
- Full View: "If we've determined that a book is out of copyright, or the publisher or rightsholder has given us permission, you'll be able to page through the entire book from start to finish, as many times as you like. If the book is in the public domain, you'll also be able download, save and print a PDF version to read at your own pace."
- Limited preview: if a publisher or author joins partner program you can see a few full pages – can conduct searches within book. Most limited preview books will be current.
- Snippet View: For books that may still be in copyright. Give you up to three “snippets” in context. Can then search and get more snippets. Sometimes snippet doesn’t have the word you searched. Contents are not complete – seems to be an algorithm
- No Preview Available: Just get the basic About. Dictionaries fall in this category. Get enough to know whether the word is in the dictionary.
Controversy
From Wikipedia: "Google Book Search remains controversial. While many hail the initiative for its potential to offer unprecedented access to what may become the largest online corpus of human knowledge, the publishing industry and writers' groups have criticised the project as a copyright infringement. The Authors Guild of America and Association of American Publishers have individually sued Google, citing "massive copyright infringement." Google claims it represents fair use, and is the digital age equivalent of a card catalogue with every word in the publication indexed."
Uses
- Find a book about your subject
- Find similar or related books
- Supplement a library catalog search
- Genealogy or biography - find a name
- Creates readership for books
Readings/Reference
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