Google Book Search Adds My Library, Popular Passages, Embedded Quotes & More

gary price, September 6th, 2007 at 11:43 am ET:

Barry:
COol stuff for sure.

A quick note to point out that there are several other services that offer free (or for a small fee) that offer full text books, some even new.

For a directory of online books (including Google content) take a look at the Online Books Page with special attention to the new additions page/rss feed. Sources, sources, everywhere.

Next, The Digital Book Index is amazing. Tens of thousands of books. Most free, some fee-based.

Third, THe World Public Library. Well organized, numerous features and is only $8.95/year

Next, The Open Library Project

New books.
Well, most public libraries, corporate libraries, etc. offer free access to NEW full text books often via a service called NetLibrary, ask your local library if it’s available. This service in many cases also includes downloadable audiobooks.

All you need is a library card (each library offers various services) and you “virtually check” the book out of the library. In some cases, you don’t even need a library card. An drivers license number of recognized IP will work.

To give you an idea of what’s out there, here’s what the SF Public Library offers. Again, it’s all free for personal use BUT every library offers different services.

More in this article from News.com

More and more libraries are also offering FREE access to Safari. Thousands of NEw full text books from O’Reilly, McGraw-Hill, and others. If your library doesn’t offer it for free you can subscribe to the service.

What about books for kids? Well, we’ve also mentioned the International Children’s Digital Library many times on ResourceShelf. All of the content is free, available in several languages and looks good. The basic search interface is appealing, useful and dare we say, fun, for both for children and even “older kids.”

ebrary, a service that offers full text books to organizations that license content also provides Shop ebrary. It’s free to search, browse, read the full text of over 20,000 titles. Pay to print or save a page to your computer.

Another excellent directory to see if a book is available electronically in any format is at:
http://www.ebooklocator.com/.

Btw, a national book digitization program recently started in the UK.

Microsoft Live Book Search is also growing.

This post (it lists several other sources including the wonderful Shakespeare Digital Library at the Univ. of Victoria and another favorite, the Abraham Lincoln Digital Library at the Univ of Illinois.

Finally, for previews of new material don’t forget that Amazon Search Inside the Book can be useful.

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gary price, September 6th, 2007 at 6:09 pm ET:

Barry,
A couple more notes about book services. The point is to have a good knowledge of what is available and where to find it. Take advantage of the right tool at the right time.

++ Another service offering full text books online is Books24×7.com. It is often licensed by companies but they also personal subscriptions. Here’s a list of some of the latest titles added. All of these books are full text and unabridged.

++ A couple of people sent me notes asking what
NetLibrary offers in terms of features. NetLibrary offers full text of material (new and old books) for free for personal use via public libraries. All you need is a libary card. In many cases audiobooks are available. A quick call to your local public, academic, etc. library can get you the details.

The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia
Note: Both Google and Amazon.com offer limited previews for this book.
What does NetLibrary offer?
+ Full text and fielded searching (name, author, keyword, etc.)
+ Access to the full text content of the book (all pages, all images, etc.)
+ Add to your “favorites” collection on NetLibrary
+ Bibliographic info (subject headings, etc.) and ability to mail info.
+ Search for All Similar Items
+ Search content of book only
+ Hyperlinked chapters (material is delivered in PDF) and direct links to other parts of the book.
+ Some books allow you to print or save pages
+ Copy and paste text from PDF. (Depending on title)
+ Add notes and comments to your personal page
+ Direct link to American Heritage Dictionary
+ Some books offer hyperlinked citations and indicies

++ Finally, for new material a limited preview (what Amazon calls “Search Inside” + the stats they provide might be available from one service but not available at another. In other words, this is yet another example when using more than one service can be useful.

Example:
Amazon.com offers “Search Inside the Book” for Battelle’s “The Search” while Google Book Search offers an overview and related materials but not a limited preview.

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rustybrick, September 7th, 2007 at 9:19 am ET:

Thanks Gary, all great info.

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gary price, September 7th, 2007 at 11:12 am ET:

Barry,
Thanks for the kind words.

Like I said in my first post, the new Google features are way cool.

With that clearly understood, I think it’s also worthwhile to point out that other sites that have been digitizing books and other material also offer provide way cool stuff and again shows why knowing about and using the right site at the right time is the important part.

Two final points.

First, a great place to find digitally scanned material is via Dave Mattison’s collection.

Second, since you use a Shakespeare example, a bit more about the Bard.

I mentioned earlier about the great work being done building the Internet Shakespeare Editions at the University of Victoria in Canada. As you’ll see their is a lot of material of value to the researcher including the:
+ Shakespeare in Performance: a searchable database of performance materials from over 1000 film and stage productions related to Shakespeare’s works.

+ Bio info, chronologies, maps, and bibliographies, etc.

But let’s focus on the material from his plays and some poems.

Various editions, various scans

Our collection includes a growing number of facsimiles — graphic images — of the books as they were originally published.

+ Here is a text transcript of Macbeth. You can go directly to specific acts/scenes, pages, etc.
Also:

You may also explore some views of the text generated by the computer: a concordance, the actor’s parts, and some statistics concerning the actor’s roles and their appearances.

Other examples:

Hamlet and Othello
You can:

View, search, print, or cut and paste transcriptions of the old spelling texts as they were originally published. It may come as a surprise to many that Hamlet was originally published in three very different versions.

+ Here are various edition scans of Macbeth. You’ll also see that each Act and Scene by publication is hyperlinked. Nice time saver. You can also compare one book side-by-side with another version. You can also open a window to clearly read only the text.

+ The Illuminated Text, a new resource which shows individual pages of folios, quartos and other original Shakespeare publications in an interactive, visually appealing display.

+ Keyword Search the Texts
Search includes character speeches and stage directions.
You can also refine by speaker.

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