History 430: Seminar in U.S. History (Quinney)

Some publishers, organizations, and universities have placed open-access books on the internet. They may be older editions, out of copyright, and in some cases, pirated versions. 

Google Books is one means to discover these works. 

• Lacks subject headings to find similar materials
• Does not always have the complete book due to copyright restrictions
• Text navigation features are limited in comparison to the standard e-book
• Cannot download content
• It may be easier to request through our Digitization on Demand service

Other collections are found in the following: 

• HathiTrust
• Internet Archive (AKA) archive.org and its subset, Open Library
• Project Gutenberg 
• Library of Congress' Book/Printed material collection
• Digital Library of America
• Digital theses and dissertation collections at various universities (although these are not recommended for your research, the bibliographies can be useful to find published works)

Google Books offers a range of access to book content that Google has digitized from a variety of library collections. The results may appear as: 

• Citation only (tells you the book exists, but you cannot access content)
• Snippet or Preview (access to some of the book, but maybe not the part you need)
• Full text (the whole book with some search ability to focus on the part you need.) 

Content

• Not only books, but newspapers and magazines are included unless you apply the appropriate filter. 
• US government documents (reports, hearings, etc.) are included.

Tools: 

• The Library function allows to to bookmark titles into a collection within Google (you are giving up some privacy.) 
• Search function within the book shows how many matches there are to your search term which is not necessarily the most useful evaluation tool.  
• Date limiter is the publication date, not the historical period. 

Limitations:

• Cannot filter for scholarly works only, meaning you might get works of fiction on your topic.
• Search results will only highlight the first term in your search (to find the other terms, 'clear search' and type in the new term.) 
• Anything under copyright (1924 and newer) will likely limit the amount of content. 
• You cannot download any book.
• You cannot print from Google Books (use screen capture to save a piece you need.)