5.31.2008

Googling books for research and pleasure

A Lady's SecretI'm on a Jo Beverley kick and have just read A Lady's Secret. In her notes at the end, Beverley points out a good resource for writers, particularly of historicals: Google Book Search.

I'd been using it unwittingly for my other blog -- I found old-timey books on wet nursing such as A Treatise on Hygiene and Public Health.

You can also often search selections of current books to see if there are passages to interest you, such as The History of the European Family, which also gave me invaluable information on breastfeeding rates from days gone by.

Google Book Search is trying to scan in many copies of old and rare books to preserve and share them for free, and publishers and authors of newer books can offer a glimpse into their pages as a service to potential readers.

As a writer doing research or a publisher promoting a book, it's worth looking into. As a reader scouting out good new reads, it's also a treat!

1 comments:

Lauren Wayne » Blog Archive » Give readers a taste said...

[...] I’d come to almost all of the books on my list through online resources. It reminded me of Jo Beverley’s plug of Google Book Search, and my note that current books are also wonderful to have in full or in excerpted form [...]

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...