BobWelland
Stainless
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2002
- Location
- Seattle, WA. USA
I have been messing around with Google Book (http://books.google.com) for the last few days and it is amazing (I have not affiliation with Google). Two things are interesting to note:
1. You can specify searches by publication date range
2. Many of the older books can be downloaded in full for free (those whose copyright has expired)
For example, here is Colvin and Stanley's 1910 book "Machine Shop Primer":
Colvin and Stanley's "Machine Shop Primer"
I found it with the following search:
machine shop date:1850-1920
date:1850-1920 says to only look at books published between 1850 and 1920.
You can find the same book with a specific search for books by Fred Colvin:
inauthor:fred inauthor:colvin
inauthor: allows you to specify an author name.
You can find the same book in a third way:
intitle:machine intitle:primer
intitle: allows you to specify words in the title.
You can narrow intitle and inauthor searches with the date: restriction.
I have shown the searches from most general to most specific. In general, I start with the most general search unless I am looking for something very specific (Books by Fred Colvin, for example).
The UI has one quirk that seems broken to me: there is an "all books vs. full view books" button. I have found that there are down-loadable books that you can find with the "all books" button that do not show up with the "full view books" button set. Not sure what is going on there but I now only work with the "all books" button set unless there is a huge number of hits.
For the historically minded, this is a mint of information. I have found lots of resources on machine design, steam engines, early airplane design, etc.
Another thing to note is that the books tend to be quite small (3-15 Mbytes) and so they download quite quickly and are of high quality (thank goodness for compression technology!).
It would be interesting to have "research posts" which list interesting books in a specific area.
I am not sure how quickly Google is adding books but they seem to have scanned a lot of books from the Harvard, Stanford, and University of Michigan Libraries.
Cheers,
Bob Welland
1. You can specify searches by publication date range
2. Many of the older books can be downloaded in full for free (those whose copyright has expired)
For example, here is Colvin and Stanley's 1910 book "Machine Shop Primer":
Colvin and Stanley's "Machine Shop Primer"
I found it with the following search:
machine shop date:1850-1920
date:1850-1920 says to only look at books published between 1850 and 1920.
You can find the same book with a specific search for books by Fred Colvin:
inauthor:fred inauthor:colvin
inauthor: allows you to specify an author name.
You can find the same book in a third way:
intitle:machine intitle:primer
intitle: allows you to specify words in the title.
You can narrow intitle and inauthor searches with the date: restriction.
I have shown the searches from most general to most specific. In general, I start with the most general search unless I am looking for something very specific (Books by Fred Colvin, for example).
The UI has one quirk that seems broken to me: there is an "all books vs. full view books" button. I have found that there are down-loadable books that you can find with the "all books" button that do not show up with the "full view books" button set. Not sure what is going on there but I now only work with the "all books" button set unless there is a huge number of hits.
For the historically minded, this is a mint of information. I have found lots of resources on machine design, steam engines, early airplane design, etc.
Another thing to note is that the books tend to be quite small (3-15 Mbytes) and so they download quite quickly and are of high quality (thank goodness for compression technology!).
It would be interesting to have "research posts" which list interesting books in a specific area.
I am not sure how quickly Google is adding books but they seem to have scanned a lot of books from the Harvard, Stanford, and University of Michigan Libraries.
Cheers,
Bob Welland
