Ah, that wonderful friend of readers and researchers (not to mention librarians!), the book. Back in the time of Gutenberg, books were considered quite revolutionary. Here's a funny take on this era when books were the new technology: The Medieval Help Desk - with English subtitles (2 min., 38 sec.).



About three years ago, Google embarked on its own book revolution: a project to make millions of books more accessible. Partnering with Stanford University and the University of Michigan, they set out to scan every page of every book in their libraries. In the past year, the project has expanded to more partners, including the University of Virginia and several publishers. According to one librarian in Charlottesville, a truck pulls up to the library's loading dock, loads hundreds of boxes of books, and a few days later, it pulls back up, returns the books, and departs with hundreds more. Where is their warehouse? How do they work their magic? Alas, that is a corporate secret. However, the result of this mysterious work is at your fingertips - in Google Book.


How can you use Google Book when you're researching?

• Look up promising books you find on reference lists or further/recommended reading lists
• Use the book preview (if available) to assess the book's relevance to your research
• Use the Find this book in a library link to cross-search all public and university libraries in the Richmond area (as well as many others worldwide) for the book. If the link is not included, go to Worldcat to search for the title.
• On the About this book page (sample), scroll down to check for References from web pages, References from book, and References from scholarly works for leads to other promising sources
  
• Save books with limited or full previews to your personal Google library (requires a free Google account) so you can search inside them, and add notes and labels to them later
• Look up books you used in your research but for which you forgot to record the publication details for your works cited/references list

Book search tips

• If the book you've discovered has a vague title (e.g. American History), put the title in quotation marks and add the author's last name to the search
• If you've discovered the book on a book store web site, search by the book's ISBN.
• To discover books with Google Book, use Advanced Search to combine author and keyword searches OR to search by subject (which ensures the book is about that topic)
  
• Find other books with the same subject heading by expanding the subjects list and clicking on the desired subject heading

Preview types
There are four levels of access in Google Book:

• no preview
• snippet view
• limited preview
• full preview

Full preview is available for works no longer protected by copyright (a.k.a. in the public domain)and for which the publisher has allowed full preview. Many of these works can also be downloaded as a PDF.

Examples: Alice in Wonderland (no download) and Newton's Principia (download available)

Limited preview allows the viewer to see a limited number of pages (exactly how many is unpredictable). To conserve your page count, use the table of contents, index, or book search to focus your viewing.

Example: The History and Sociology of Genocide

Book viewing tips

• Use the table of contents or index to locate promising pages/chapters
• Use the book search to find references to specific words or phrases, esp. those not included in the index
• When available, you can switch from one-page to two-page viewing
• If you don't have a Google account, you can bookmark the book

Organizing your library
Once a book is saved to the library associated with your Google account, you can do the following:

• Add labels to it (a great way to create "shelves" of books on certain topics)
• Add notes to it
• Take the RSS feed for your library and post it on your blog
• Publish the URL for your library. Example: MW library's Google library