In 2004, Google announced a partnership with serveral large academic and public libraries to scan 15 million books within a decade. Out of this project, called the Google Print Library Project, eventually came the product Google Book Search.
Google Book Search now allows browsing and searching full text within hundreds of thousands of titles from publishers as well as titles in the public domain. Subject to copyright restrictions, Google Book Search allows either viewing and downloading (as a PDF) of an entire volume, or online viewing of portions of volumes only.
Google Scholar
The year 2004 also saw the introduction of Google Scholar. Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.
The user can set preferences to view materials available via their home institution.
Your task
Visit Google Book Search and search for a book. I suggest Google: The Missing Manual by Sarah Milstein as it allows a limited preview.
The limited preview allows you to view the table of contents on the right hand side and view some segments of the book in the main panel. You can usually search within the full text, although some pages may not be available for viewing in the main view due to copyright restrictions.
You may also want to locate a public domain work. In the Google Book Search results page, click on 'Full View' to restrict your search only to works that are wholly available for viewing and download. This includes works in which the copyright term has expired, as well as works which the publisher has released into the public domain.
Visit Google Scholar and search for articles and books held by Victoria University.
Make a blog post about these Google research tools. Are they a good idea?
Next week
You'll be having a look at iGoogle, another product from Google allowing you to create a customised home page. If you are feeling a little overwhelmed, next week will be more easy-going!
Resources
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