About Google Books Partner Program Library Project Perspectives
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User StoriesHear what our users are saying... Message from: Jennifer "Thanks for turning me on to this service! It is just like browsing in a book store but online. I foresee my pocketbook getting lots of use!" Message from: John "Today I was browsing Google [Book Search] for the first time and immediately found three in-print books on the subject I am researching. That's three books I am about to buy. Message from: Kay "I heard about Google's additional features at a genealogical society meeting, so I decided to try out Google [Book Search] by checking the names of a couple of ancestors. The first search produced a photograph of a relative I had never seen before--I immediately ordered a copy of the book it was in. The second search turned up several references to an ancestor in historical works I would probably never have found without Google [Book Search]." Message from: Blake "[Google Books] is now is a search tool that cannot be ignored by local historians...the Google [Book Search] service is as easy to use as -- well -- Google!...I have successfully purchased a number of books in this fashion." Message from: Kirsten "I used Google Books for the first time today, and have already ordered a copy of a book for our company library. I would never have found this book, or been able to determine if it was worth ordering, without Google Books." Message from: Chris "I was fooling around with Google [Book Search] today and discovered that I am cited in Hybrid Fictions: American Literature and Generation X. Far out. The first thing I did was go to Amazon to order a copy." Message from: Richard "I gave Google [Book Search] a test run...I came across a fascinating result when I searched for my own name "macmanus". The first search result was a book by Stephen Fox called The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators. I'm off to go buy that Stephen Fox book ;-)" Message from: Fred "I've been waiting for this since I first learned about the web...thank you for finally delivering it. In 5 minutes, with my first search, I found a facsimile, written in his own hand, of Lincoln 's Gettysburg address buried in the middle of a children's book published in 1896. And it was simple." Message from: Zohair "I love Google Books because you get to look at the book, check out how the print looks, see if it is the right edition, and see if you'd be interested. Today I found a book on here I couldn't find anywhere in town and I was able to buy it from Amazon because of it. Thank you Google." Message from: John "[Google Books] is an indispensable service that benefits readers, researchers, writers, authors, and publishers by making information accessible to all rather than merely to those who live near a research library. I cannot physically nor financially travel to distant libraries for my research on Latin American history that is contained in hard to find or out of print books. I hope Google will continue this service unhindered and in fact expand it to include libraries around the world." Message from: Kathleen "I tested [Google Books] by typing in my maiden name. Wow! I had no idea that my uncle was mentioned in a book -- The Book of Renee by Renn Martin -- that he built an x-ray machine, and that the author of the book wondered where he was today and wished him well! I passed that information on to him -- I am sure he has already bought the book by now!" Message from: O. Ali "I went to search for some very old books written in about 1968-9, which were a part of my HR training, and found them online at Google Books. I couldn't find them for last 7 months. Now I am definitely going to buy them." Message from: Penny "As a publicist I'm front line everyday trying to push my authors into the spotlight and the facts are brutal. I have seen authors with great books struggle to get *anyone's* attention. To me, Google [Book Search] is another way for them to get noticed in a noisy world and it's another way for readers to find the books they might not otherwise be exposed to. Forgive the cliche but it sounds pretty win-win to me. So if you're an author looking for another way to "get out there" give Google [Book Search] a look-see. In my opinion if you're not using every avenue to promote your book then you're not only doing your career a disservice but cheating your potential reader out of some pretty great stuff." Message from: Bob "I just came across a copy of the classic philosophy text Principia Ethica in your catalog of books and what I want to tell you is WOW!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you. The fact that the book retains the pagination of the original but is fully searchable is a dream come true for scholarly research. This is an extraordinary service to the public. Again, my thanks and my congratulations to you. This is an advancement of historic significance... I own a hard copy and have read many article on this book, but what Google offers has really made it easier to write on this book... I'm working on a Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy and education, and there are a few books that you have placed on line that are pertinent to my dissertation. All of these books are classics and I own them all. What is interesting, though, is that for those books you have online that are different editions from the one I own, I am inclined to buy the books anew so as to be able to refer to the copy you have online... I know of no better method for doing textual analysis than by using your service." Message from: David "My own verdict: Google [Book Search] is potentially an extremely useful service, especially if publishers understand this is a help, not a threat. Books in most cases will benefit if included. If a book is already in the database and mentions a phrase of interest, you can find it lickety-split. The famous Google interface works great." Message from: Yvonne "I was looking to find symptoms of different knee injuries to see which ones matched what I had experienced...there was a section at the top of the page offering Google [Book Search] titles, and I clicked through to the book Disorders of the Patellofemoral Joint. I read a few of the passages describing the treatment and surgery. Based on what I had read, I diagnosed my condition as a lateral patellar dislocation...I was very relieved to convince myself that it was not an ACL tear. When my doctor got the MRI results back, my diagnosis was right on!" Message from: Jerry "Years ago I was cycle touring with my sons in France and we came across a church in Avranches that held in a special display case a skull. I had forgotten the details so my first search on Google [Book Search] pulled up the story of Saint-Aubert and how he allegedly came to have a hole in his skull. The story was found in the Theosophical Quarterly Magazine 1927-1928, a source I would have never likely found other than through Google [Book Search]. Pretty darn cool." Message from: Brendan "I would like to comment on how useful Google [Book Search] truly is. While trying to write a comparative paper on a novel, I remembered a passage of text I wanted to reference, but had no clue as to where in the book it was. I was able to find the novel with great ease on Google [Book Search] and then search the text for the passage I was looking for. The page I needed was restricted however enough of the query context appeared to guide me to the right spot in my own copy of the book. Even factoring in the amount of time it took me to IM a friend of mine, tell her how excited I was about the whole situation and write this feedback letter, I'm still saving time by not having to read large swaths of the book again." Message from: Anonymous "I live in Brazil and I am doing a Master degree in Translation Studies. Many books that are good for my research are not easy to find over here and I found them in Google [Book Search]." Message from: Jean "My family found out a couple of years ago that we were descended from a small aristocratic Scottish family. By using Google Books, I've been able to discover many references to my ancestors in 18th and 19th century books that are not accessible in Australian libraries. I even found a record of my family tree back to King Alfred the Great! Google Books makes it a real possibility for us to write a comprehensive and interesting family history!" Message from: Nicole "Just wanted to send you the largest possible thank you – I'm doing my dissertation on Samuel Richardson's Clarissa – It's 1500 pages and too long to search manually, and too old/long/dense for anyone else to have it online. My boyfriend showed me this site when I was close to a nervous breakdown trying to find specific passages. Thank you, thank you, thank you for having so much of it available. You have kept me sane." Message from: Rex "As a researcher and author at a major university, I use Google Books to find relevant portions of books that my university holds in its library which I could not sort through in a timely manner otherwise. This has revolutionized my capability to perform literature reviews for my work and to spend more time synthesizing my own ideas from the work that has already been done." Message from: Lucy "I think it's a great idea that Google is scanning books of publishers so that more texts can be available online. I hope lots of publishers are participating! ... I have two preschool age children and we are passionate about books. It would be so wonderful if I could read some or all of these books online to decide whether I want to buy them. Publishers need to understand that offering text online will only HELP not hinder their sales. For no online experience can ever equal the joy of curling up on your couch with a good book...or the joy of having your child on your lap as you read." Message from: Rachel "I am a librarian at a large academic library. I have been promoting Google [Books Search] to all the students and faculty who come to our reference desk...Faculty like it both as a research tool and as a tool that helps them make their cases for tenure -- they can now find out about books that cite their work. Heck, this could be a great tool for publishers, to see what books on their backlists are still getting play and might use a new edition or a reprint. I am also using Google [Book Search] as a tool to help me decide how to spend that part of my book budget that is discretionary. If a book cites another book that I already know is good, if it cites a faculty author, if it has information on a certain, narrow topic of interest to a particular faculty member, I can now go out of my way to buy that book...The fact that Google keeps readers from paging through the whole book online means that readers get an excellent teaser which helps commit them to a sale or a request that their library buy the book." Message from: Kalyan "I was searching for a topic called "Simulated annealing in VLSI". I've searched in local libraries, but I couldn't find [anything]."Simulated annealing" is a small topic. the local library searches allow the search only by title, author etc. I searched for that in Google [Book Search] and found many books, and I immediately bought two of those books..." Message from: Bernie "While searching the collection in Google's virtual library for instances of my family surname, Robichau, I found something remarkable. A book by James W. Baker titled Plymouth Laborand Leisure (Images of America) contained an instance of the word "Robichau," and clicking through the link brought me to a photo of my great uncle, Earl Robichau, from 1914. I could tell who the Robichau in the photograph was…the family resemblance is remarkable. Never before could I have found such an obscure and wonderful gem. Tonight, Google [Book Search] prompted me to buy two "hardcopies" of books that I never would have purchased, or even known about." Message from: Patrick "I run a nonprofit computer lab. We have a large amount of unprivileged children in the lab. Just thought you would like to know that they discovered Google [Book Search] and loved it. They were using it for school work and showing others how to use it. Thanks again for the great products!" Message from: Jaemi "Earlier this week our new Teen Services librarian came in with this story: She was helping a fifth-grader try to find a book for a report…She had looked in all the sections she thought were applicable in the shelves and found nothing. So she tried…Google Books. In the end, they found a book in a section they would never otherwise have thought to look. Child: happy, staff: happy, homework: saved." Message from: Erich "Great tool for finding technical books. I'm a geotechnical engineer and one of the hardest things for me is finding references. I'll do a library online catalog search find the book that interests me based on the title, then physically go to the library only to find out that it wasn't what I was looking for. Now I can look inside the book, then determine if I would like to check the book out...Thanks a lot!" Message from: Anonymous "I LOVE Google [Book Search]!!! I am writing a paper on the history of statistics and was disheartened when I picked up Claude Bernard's Introduction to Experimental Medicine - because it did not have an index. But then I found you." Message from: Joanna "I am a PhD student and Google Books is of great help to me. I can browse through books which are unavailable in Polish libraries." Message from: Don "As an author whose books appear in Google [Book Search], I want to express my support for the project. I appreciate potential readers being able to find my book, examine an excerpt – as they might do while leafing through the book at a store, or as they might do on a major seller like Amazon – and deciding for themselves if the book is for them…Google is not in any way alleviating the need for books to exist or be purchased, and in fact are making these books more noticeable and accessible than ever before." Message from: Tom "For the third time in the past week, I've been able to answer thorny reference questions using Google [Book Search] that I otherwise would have simply given up on...on a lark I tried Google [Book Search], since it had been so helpful in my assisting other patrons in finding what had seemed to be unfindable via the traditional routes of library research. And lo and behold -- there was my mystery reference...Although the bibliography was itself within copyright, I was permitted to view the page on which the search engine had found a match, and that was more than enough to steer me to the proper volume on the shelves here at the library. Mission accomplished! The implications of this mass digitization movement are nothing less than staggering. For a long time I despaired for the future of humanistic studies. But Google [Book Search] and similar endeavors have given me a burst of optimism. Not only will scholarship in these fields be enhanced as a result of digitization, but it will become more relevant as well ...The more that is scanned and made searchable, the more humanity as a whole will benefit..." Message from: Paul "I discovered Google [Book Search] this evening and what a delight it is...I belong to several libraries, and all of them have a suggestion box for "requests to buy new books", I will now be able to suggest many more using Google [Book Search]. I will now have the greatest choice in making recommendations." Message from: Euan "My gob is well and truly smacked! Google [Book Search] is up and running, looks very impressive, and has already introduced me to two facts that blew me away. I did a search for books referring to my home town of Strathaven in Lanarkshire and came up with two real surprises." |
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