Use Google Books for Research

I first became aware of the benefits of using Google Books for research when they began turning up in the searches I did. There, in the first ten or twenty listings, would be a book.

At first I skipped over them — after all, how much of a book could they show? wouldn’t I just get interested and then WHAMMO a section would be missing?

Well, that did happen to me a few times, but overall I have found them to provide good information whether I am writing a blog post, doing research for a book, or just looking something up that I am curious about.

Here’s how to do it:

1. You can just click on any books that show up in a regular Google search.

2. To use Google Books directly, go to http://books.google.com/

It’s fun just to browse the books that they show, divided up by categories.

Or type in a search topic. I just did one . Too many things came up that didn’t allow me to read any of the books, so I clicked on “Advanced search” just to the right of the search box. Then I chose “limited preview and full preview” from the choices. I could have chosen full preview only, or public domain only.

You will typically get better results when searching a term of more than one word if you put the phrase in quotes.

Try this, see what you think. There are places to buy the book listed on its page if you get really into it.