Rather than share one book with you, I want you to know about many and where to find them - Google Books.The co-founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have always had as their goal for people to search through the world's books and find what they were looking for. As computer science graduate students, they hoped to create a web crawler that would index books. They theorized that by analyzing the citations in books (you know, those Works Cited lists that teachers require) they could determine the relevance and usefulness of a given book based on the quality and number of times it was cited in other books. How genius! Google's searching ability was the result of this research at Stanford University.
Soon Page and Brin were working with major libraries digitizing the library's collection. The University of Michigan, Larry Page's alma mater, was the first to agree. Work is still underway scanning the university's seven million volumes and many other libraries around the world are now involved. Some current authors and publishers are also supportive of this initiative.
There have been lawsuits due to copyright law concerns. Books in the public domain (copyright-free) are available in their entirety. Books under copyright are shown with segments missing. Google Books will link you to an online book seller or a library in your area that owns the book.
Give Google Books a try. Many times I've found that I don't need to read the full book to find just what I'm seeking. Magazines are also included in the collection. You can search by subject, author, title, or simply browse the collection. You can create favorite book lists to share with friends.
Let me know if you find Google Books helpful. Stay tuned. Page and Brin are always up to something new and innovative. :-)
Reviewed by Mrs. Boehm
