Google Books' New "My Library" Feature

Newsletter reader Mal Humes sent along some information about a new Google service that sounds great. Here is Mal's message:

Hi Dick,

I enjoy your blog.

I wanted to bring a new Google feature to your attention that as yet seems to be unnoticed, and it takes Google Books a giant step forward in its usefulness.

Basically you can now use Google Books to create a custom library, review books, and to tag them with categories and labels.

You can then use that book collection as a list to share with others, and the Library also offers a custom full text search engine for you and others to search specific collections of books you've added to your library. Think about the implications of that.

It's basically a Web 2.0 makeover that lets books be handled much the same way YouTube handles videos, but it's arguably a much more valuable service because of the way it allows us to mine collections of books and share custom search tools built on this.

The implications are stunning, not just for genealogy, but also for students and researchers.

It gives us a way to rate, flag, and share useful books, and to better navigate and re-use the books we find, and we can cut and paste directly from the web pages into our research notes and database if the material is in the public domain.

Please see my blog post on this at: http://colonialroots.net/2007/09/08/google-books-adds-my-library-tags-reviews-and-personal-searches/

I think this merits a lot more attention, if not a celebration. Full-text book searches effectively trump traditional library catalogs and the typically incomplete indexes found in books. This stands a good chance to eclipse Amazon's social networking of books via listmania and reviews.

It hasn't even really crept out into mainstream media, and I don't think may people see yet how much this will likely change the way we use electronic books by adding a whole level of utility to electronic books management and usage.

Best regards,

Mal Humes

Thanks for the information, Mal. I took a look at http://books.google.com and found that even Google does not prominently promote the new services mentioned. However, once you display a book (after sign in), one of the links in the column to the right of the book offers to "Add to my library." A bit of poking around with Google's search engine found the FAQ (frequently-asked questions). The FAQ sums it up:

"You can now create personalized libraries on Google Book Search where you can label, review, rate, and of course, full-text search, a customized selection of books. These collections will live online and be accessible anywhere you can log in to your Google account. Once you've built a collection, you can share it with friends by sending them a link to your library in Google Book Search. You can even set up RSS feeds with friends so that they're alerted when you add new books to your collection."

If you use Google's Gmail, you already have the requisite account. If not, creating one is simple and free. You can read more about the new features at http://books.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=75375.

Comments

[Happy Dae]

This seems a natural progression of what Google has with its blogs. The tagging, searching, rating and sharing is beginning to seem natural now. I think it is "swell."

As genealogists, we might even ask them to add a form of citation. I think it would be nice if they gave us a default format for those citations, too, such as the Associated Press or Chicago Manual of Style.

But enough of my "suggestive" talk....

Happy Dae.
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com/ssg1.htm

[Judy]

This is a very cool feature. I haven't tried out all the features but will definitely be using this regularly.
Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

[Laura]

LibraryThing is a terrific online book cataloging and Web 2.0 site that I encourage everyone to check into. It is also fun to work with, not to mention easy and intuitive. It's free for up to 200 books, or you can sign up for a year at $10, or become a lifetime member for an embarrassingly small fee ($25).

The developers have a great sense of humor, too. Check it out at librarything.com.

[Robert]

I found a genealogy-related book I was interested in searching, and managed to add it to my library, but the full text wasn't available -- only snippets. What percentage of books have full text and what percentage only snippets?

[Mal]

Probably a smaller percentage of books there as a whole have full text free online, though they should all be searchable with full text. There are rights issues, sometimes decided by the holding library even if the material may be in public domain.

I think there are many thousands of public domain books of interest to us there anyway and even the ones we just get clues to check further in elsewhere are another clue for us to explore. The link to look for this book in a library near you pipes you to WorldCat to show the nearest library copy near you.

If you find one not fully viewable online not the source library and check their web site. Also look for alternate editions, and check Microsoft books.live.com if it seems like it should be in public domain.

I found one set of Indiana genealogy journals where I could see a snippet was online that showed it contained a tree of much interest to me. From that I was able to figure out the library where this was scanned from. Checking that web site I found I could request copies online and (and pay after they sent the copies!) and I was able to request it and received a 20 page article for $5 that covers many generations of a branch from one of my great grandfather's sibling. So keep in mind it's still a useful tool for locating possible references even if you can't read or copy the citation online.

LibraryThing.com is useful also, but you can't do the full text searches or create custom search engines. You can scan all your book barcodes though, as an easy way to catalog your library, which got me to sign up and look for that CueCat reader I threw in a box years ago.

[Suzanne Russell]

This is good news. I have used Google's full-text search several times, even finding an obscure British genealogy/history book once. The book collection custom library will definitely be an added asset.
I use http://www.worldcat.org/ a lot as well. You simply type in the name of a book and your zip code, and the site shows you a list of libraries where the book can be found. It also tells you how far away from you those libraries are.