Google Books: My story of Instant Love
September 15th, 2008I heard about the Google Books project a few years back; how books in the public domain were being scanned and added to a growing database. Long before that, a friend with an early generation Palm Pilot had told me about the free ebooks available on Project Gutenberg, which I’ve used with success and great appreciation a few times. “Same thing,” I thought.
Boy, was I wrong.
I’ve been reading a lot of folklore lately as inspiration for and distraction from a fun YA story I’m writing. I own a ton of fables, fairy tales, and folklore books both from my childhood and as a result of collecting them over the years. Some are standard bookstore fare or tattered favorites, some are obscure finds from used bookstores and library sales (e.g. Once There Was and Was Not - Armenian Takes Retold). Some I’ve read cover-to-cover, some I’ve barely opened. But I’m always on the lookout for treasures to add to my library of tales.
So this morning, while reading the 18-page foreword to Folktales of Norway (which precedes the 26-page introduction), the author mentioned an 1825 folklore collection by Thomas Crofton Croker entitled “Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland.” I’d not heard of it before, and realized that my collection of specifically Irish folklore is pretty much nonexistent, so I hit the Internet to see what editions might be available.
First stop: an amazon.com search for “fairy legends and traditions in the south of ireland
Oh yeah, the public domain! I checked gutenberg.org but it didn’t come up in a search. So I just did a Google search for “Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland” and the first result was the Google Books link.
Lo and behold, clicking the link brought me to a good quality scan of an 1859 version printed in London… that is completely searchable. DROOL. Off to the right, it offered the option to download either the PDF or text version. The “About this book” page provided details including popular passages, references from scholarly works and websites, and quick links to selected pages.
Best of all, there was an option, in simple Google style, to add the book to my library. Because I was already signed in to my Google account, I didn’t have to do anything except click the link. I could feel the possibilities pulsing through my fingertips as I learned a little more about “my library.”
It quickly became home to my digital book collection in the way that LibraryThing is the digital organization mecca of my real-life collection of books. Google will allow me to import ISBNs, which means that I could theoretically start to keep my real-life book collection there, too… but I love LibraryThing and its community so I think I’ll stick with that for now.
As for the original purveyer of free ebooks, Project Gutenberg still has plenty of merits that stem from the fact that it’s a Wiki project and anyone can contribute. However, that also means that it’s more susceptible to human limitations. In comparison to over 250,000 manually transcribed books since the 1971 beginnings of Project Gutenberg, Google has an automated scanning process that has allowed them to collect over a million books (estimated) since 2004. Google also offers original page scans in addition to a text version of every book.
Gutenberg’s site has decent navigation–much improved over the navigation I remember from my first experience in 1998–though I still found it clunky compared to Google’s streamlined and familiar user interface.
Gutenberg is a non-profit organization that is supported by volunteers and donations, whereas Google Books presents, ironically, “buy this book” ad links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, AbeBooks, etc. and offers “previews” of a lot current books, which are clearly intended to work the same way as Amazon’s “look inside this book” feature–to mimic real life bookstore browsing and entice the browser to purchase a hard copy of the book.
So what’s the verdict on free ebooks from Project Gutenberg vs. Google Books?
Ultimately, as a book lover who loves reading in the name of research, it comes down to accessibility and ease of use. Because Google offers original scans of old books, I will probably go there first to get more of a taste for the “real” book with its typefaces and illustrations. The fact that I can add books to my digital library, which is tied to the Google account I use every day, makes Google the clear winner when it comes to accessibility and ease of use. However, if Google doesn’t have a digital copy of a certain book, or there seem to be mistakes in the transcription, I will immediately visit the Gutenberg site.
On a related note: if you’re a fan or supporter of audio books, I highly recommend Librivox, the “acoustical liberation of books in the public domain.” It works in the same fashion as Project Gutenberg, but volunteers record themselves reading books aloud instead of transcribing them. It’s fun to hear the difference that a good reader can make to a story.
Gutenberg, Google Books, and Librivox, together with the Internet, mark the beginnings of a vast resource that serves to educate and entertain the world (and beyond, if applicable, at a later date). They are a testament to the beauty of libraries, the wonders of the Internet, and the power of the written word.
While I doubt that my book collection will ever be all-digital, I love the advantage of a digitally searchable book and I can definitely see myself spending a lot of time reading books in the comfort of my own home that might otherwise only be available in the rare book collections of large university or metropolitan libraries.
In fact, I’m going to browse through my downloaded PDF of “Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland” right now and see what sort of inspiration it provides for the story I’m writing.
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