google books

[removed account4]

anybody else read old books on google books ?
i was researching something the other night
just typed in the key word in mr google
and sure enough about 7 books
published between 1880 and 1910 came up!

i was easy to get side tracked.

happy reading!

 

[perkeleellinen]

I'm afraid I have a preference for 'analogue' books. Rather like photography; I find staring at a computer screen to be tiring. I always print out research papers from online journals, I just can't work with a screen; it's difficult to highlight important parts; I loose my place going backwards and forwards; I can't read it on the toilet. I do a lot of writing (word processing) during the day and photography & books are a welcome break from computers.

 

[removed account4]

i agree, hand held books are nicer,
but if you can't find the journal from 1890
on "deathbed photography" or "semi-centennial camera stands"
the online version seems to do the trick.
( kind of like microfiche or microfilm without whirring or buzzing, or flickering ... )

 

[perkeleellinen]

Agreed. I actually find those microfilm readers to be very tiring also. Last year I spent one month sat in front of one reading newspaper back issues and it was awful! Especially how they scroll up and down which makes your eyes do the same. I was speaking to a fellow researcher last month and we came to the conclusion that whoever invented those machines had never done any archival work.

 

[removed account4]

it is barely one step above those arcane readers, but i agree, not much better.
except the screen isn't filled with dust and mold like an old periodical.
sometimes i dread doing research when i was in school, cause i always ended up
all stuffy and itchy-eye'd by the end of the day...
much easier in google-ville ( or is it google-land? ) ....

 

[Lee L]

much easier in google-ville ( or is it google-land? ) ....

If you're on the physical campus, it's called the googleplex, a play on googolplex which is 10^10^100 or
10^10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Lee

looks like the text parser here doesn't like long strings of zeros.

 

[removed account4]

i like the googleplex, its as much fun as spaghetti-0s

 

[Kirk Keyes]

I love it. Too bad more recent publishers/authors are not willing to put there books on there in a semiusable form. The snippet view is pretty much useless.
I'm hoping Google can get some sort of online library going where, with inexpensive subscription, I can get access to books that are in libraries that I don't have the time to travel to.

 

[Lee L]

I love it. Too bad more recent publishers/authors are not willing to put there books on there in a semiusable form. The snippet view is pretty much useless.
I'm hoping Google can get some sort of online library going where, with inexpensive subscription, I can get access to books that are in libraries that I don't have the time to travel to.

Google is trying to work out copyright issues and payment with the expected large number of people who don't want their books distributed in this fashion. They do have agreements to digitize the collections of a number of the most extensive university libraries. I suspect it will be a long time before we're close to resolving those issues. The digital world moves faster than content owners, their lawyers, and the courts move.

As Stewart Brand put it: "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other." That was in 1984, and we're just now getting to the point of being forced into dealing with the problems arising from cheap, almost cost-free digital redistribution.

The RIAA just won a case forcing a Minnesota woman, whose children also used the family computer, to pay US$80,000 per song as a penalty for file sharing 24 songs, a total of US$ 1.92 million. Certainly that's overpriced, at least for the Janet Jackson.

Anyway, add in the complexities of cross border sharing of content with the widely varying copyright laws around the world, and it will be a long time before this all shakes out and we get full access to all the books we'd like to view.

Lee

 

[driver8]

Speaking of Google, I find it most disturbing that I can't download documents to read them later on my Pocket PC or laptop. It'd be nice when such feature be implemented but, again, it is to do with too many legal issues.
BTW, I want to ask those who use the e-book readers, do they really solve the problem with readability of digital media? Are they worth buying or should we just wait further for the arrival of better screens? Also, does any of these readers support .pdf or .djvu files?

 

[BradS]

..... doing research when i was in school, cause i always ended up
all stuffy and itchy-eye'd by the end of the day...

funny....I had completely blocked that nasty little side effect from my mind. I'd get all sneezy and congested too.

 

[BrianShaw]

Google books is a major help for research in old topics. I make good use of it on a regular basis. Two problems: 1. I'm going blind from trying to read on the screen; 2. the snippet view, as Kirk mentions, is generally useless and makes me frustrated because the one page I need is generally "not available"; and 3. the downloads of the PDFs are slow no matter how much speed I buy from my internet provider (OK... that's whining... the downloads really aren't slow; I'm just impatient!) All-in-all, I'm more than greatful to the Google-gods for making the books and patents available; My research is made much easier than it has ever been.

 

[DannL]

An interesting side note: Goggle will place "full view" books up to view and download, and then shortly thereafter they will pull the books permanently. This happened with Camera Work by Alfred Stieglitz. I got through about five or six issues and then they dissappeared, to include all references to them. "The perfect crime". I wrote and asked, they denied everything. My advice: If you think you will be interested in reading a book "any time in the future", download them now.

 

[Kirk Keyes]

DAnnL - thanks for the link to your google library. There's some gems in there. (And I'm downloading them right now!)

 

[removed account4]

funny....I had completely blocked that nasty little side effect from my mind. I'd get all sneezy and congested too.

it was funny, there was this one library i would go to,
and they were like " here PLEASE take all these dusty moldy
journals from 1913 keep them as long as you want ... "
i didn't last more than a week!

 

[amuderick]

Fantastic. I have been researching iron gallate and iron tannate complexes as they relate to toning cyanotypes. There is considerable literature on the subject as it relates to printing inks that was published before 1920. All available on Google Books and all keyword searchable. I would never have the time to track down and read these fairly rare technical books. Nor would I ever discover the odd paragraph or sub-chapter on my topic of interest in a book with a completely different name...unless I had Google Books to make everything searchable. Great stuff.

 

[phritz phantom]

i stupidly started a rather nasty thread at the beginning of my apug-posting about the topic and i'm somewhat glad google is taking care of it now. i'm quite surprised that there are so many photography themed books digitalized by them (or are they just doing so much of them and i'm only looking for the foto ones?).
it's really great. there are books on pretty much everything: collotype, copper printing, old photo manuals on pretty much any classic printing techinique...

on the other hand, i'm not really happy that google is doing this... just another thing for them to make a profit and take over the world, ahem... the internet. i'm all for making books out of print accessible (their authors long gone...), but i definitely have mixed feelings about google forcing them to. buti'm very happy that someone finally takes care of all those out of print books.
reading on a screen is very much annoying. i take buying a book or getting it from my local library over a pdf or the google screen version anytime. but coming from the (german speaking) middle of europe, there's only so much you can find in the libraries. and even if, if it's not in the main library, you have to beg the librarian if you can take the book home or otherwise you have to read it there ... or make analog copies (no one minds that).
everytime i have the "darkroom" books from lustrum press in my hands (the first one, more than the second one), i think about what a shame it is that those are out of print.
another good non-google source for a few old books (i posted it here before):
http://chestofbooks.com/arts/index.html

 

[GJA]

Im inclined to think that a partnership between the Kindle and Google books could be very valuable. I would be willing to pay a nominal fee to read a book on the kindle. Of course i dont have one yet, but would buy one if and when this option becomes available.