BOOKS ONLINE PART 1: FORMATS AND GOOGLE BOOKS
©2023 Donald R.
Page last updated 2023-05-16
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ABSTRACT: Millions of books are posted online on Google, FamilySearch, Internet Archive, Libby (Over-Drive), and other websites. Many of these are every-word searchable, so you can find books
that contain what you want. This class will discuss online ebooks, their formats, and what is on Google Books. Other classes will discuss ebooks on other websites. The notes and other related information, all with active internet
links, is posted on https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html .
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu
) of Provo, Utah.
- The notes with active URLs and
additional information in other notes and articles are posted at
http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html .
- Tips: (1) To put an icon on your
desktop for these notes, or any webpage, just
drag the icon from in front of the address (above) in
your browser onto your desktop.
(2) To open a link, but keep your place
in these notes, hold down the Control key
while clicking the link.
- Problem for today: What are
ebook formats and what is on Google Books.
ONLINE BOOKS AND FORMATS
- Books are hard-copy, ebooks (digital
format), and audio books.
- There are advantages to each format,
but here we only discuss ebooks
(digital format).
- The website Statistica estimated
that about half of all books sold
in the United states now are ebooks,
books in digital format.
- Ebooks are read with an electronic
ereader on your computer, tablet,
or smartphone.
- The most common ebook formats are
pdf (Portable Document Format), ePub,
Mobi, and Kindle (Azw3)
- In many cases you can download the
book so you will have a copy to read
or search, even if it is removed from
the internet.
- Ereaders are available, many free --
these allow you to read and search even
turn pages and many will convert formats of your
ebooks.
- Calibre -
https://calibre-ebook.com/download
- good and free ereader, ecataloger, and
ebook converter -- finds all ebooks on
your computer, catalogs them, and lets
you read them, turn the pages, and sometimes search them.
GOOGLE BOOKS
- To find Google Books containing
what you want, do a Google search
-- http://www.google.com
-- then click on Books on the results page
-- this limits the results to just
those found in Google Books.
- Put quotation marks around your search
terms, , e.g. "donald r. snow"and remember
that caps and punctuation don't matter
in Google searches.
- Articles about Google books
- Google's article --
https://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/about/index.html
- Wikipedia article --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books
, gives history of Google Books and related
operations
- Info on using Google Play Books --
https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/4517692?hl=en
- Google estimated there are about
130 million different (hard-copy) books
ever published in the world and that they
had scanned more than 25 million books
- Google book searches
- To find a specific book search for the
title in quotation marks, e.g.
"The Snow Genealogy"
- When you see the icon
"EBOOK - FREE", you can click on it and
download or put it in "My Library"
where you can read it or copy it or download it for free --
Example: for Erastus Snow's
One Year In Scandinavia
- Downloaded books from Google Books don't usually have the text
layer over the picture layer of the pdf and, hence,
are not searchable on your own computer until you OCR
(Optical Character Recognize)them (see other class notes for this process)
- When Google doesn't have permission
to post the entire volume, you
only see a snippet of the page with
the search term highlighted and
information about where to find
or purchase a physical copy
- You may still be able to find
the full etext book for free on some
other website; or you can use a
screen capture program to save off
just the part you need
CONCLUSIONS
- Ebooks are very helpful, are in various formats, and many are free.
- To find Google Books with your name, do a Google search for your name (in quotes) and click Books on the results screen - you may be surprised by what you find.
- No one book website has all ebooks; we will discuss others and other references in later classes.
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