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June 7, 2007
Google Books
Google books provides a search that doesn't merely give you key word associations, but allows you to search the entire text for a phrase or word. In addition, you can use the advanced search to carefully limit how the search is conducted and how it is displayed. If you set the parameters accordingly, the results of the search can be a downloadable PDF.
Bill White has been touting this for some time and rightly so. You do have to become fairly expert at searching if you want to avoid a frustrating experience; however, the resources that become available to you as a result are enormous. And given the partnerships that Google is forging, those resources are likely only to become larger.
Yes, I know we love our books, but welcome to the digital age--PDFs are not the most comfortable volumes in the world, and yet the vast universe of things they make available to us may well be worth a little trouble. And in a proper time there will be some clever maker of PDAs who will do the Sony E-Book thing, producing a paperback sized eInk readable screen--who knows what other wonders await?
Posted by Steven Riddle at June 7, 2007 8:22 AM
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