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ROUGHLY EDITED FILE WALDEN LIBRARY WEBINAR
GOOGLE BOOKS APRIL 11TH, 2013
WALDEN UNIVERSITY MINNESOTA
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>> The broadcast is now starting. All attendees are in listen only mode.
>> Good morning or afternoon, depending on where you are, everybody. My name is Jon Allinder.
I'm one of the librarians here at Walden. I want to welcome you to the webinar on Google
Books. We want to talk about what Google Books is, why it is important to you as a scholar
and then walk through how you use Google Books. So without further ado, let's just in. Here
on my screen, this is Google book, the home page, you will notice right away, a couple
of things going on. On the right, the researching a topic box and then on the right it is the
Google Play box. That is where you can purchase books, movies. What we are interested in is
on the left, the search box. Google Books is a cool tool to use. What the folks at Google
did is partner with a lot of large research institutions and they're making digital copies
of the libraries at the research institution. They're creating this enormous collection
of ebooks. It's exciting in the sense that there is a lot of sense that is being digitized
that wasn't otherwise available that may be obscure or hasn't been turned into an ebook
yet. There are a lot of things that are becoming available via Google Books. You, as a scholar
may be interested in using Google Books when you're in the library, for example, and we
don't have a book. You know, we have I don't know the exact number, we have thousands and
thousands of ebooks, but we don't have everything. You may be trying to track something don't.
If we don't have it, can you come to Google Books and see if Google Books has it. And
you can research a particular topic, and you're interested to see what kind of books are out
there. You can come and use Google Books. It has a lot of value as a scholar. And as
an aside, it is also a neat tool to use to browse for your own personal pleasure. There
are a lot of books that are available for free, they're older books outside of copyright.
You can find interesting reads, just to read for fun. It is worth keeping that in mind.
Let's talk about using Google Books. You have the search box to search for a title of a
book or search for a topic to see what is available.
You also have the ability to browse. When you click the browse button, you are presented
with a number of different categories of books. There are classics at the top. Magazines,
Google Books also contains magazines. It doesn't just have books. It has both of those kinds
of items. Law, gardening, all kinds of different topics. So if you are interested in seeing
what the scope of Google Books is, this is a nice way to do that. They give you a breakdown
of some of the subjects covered here. There is a little more links. You can take a peek
or walk through Google Books that way, if you are new and want to see what is going
on. I will go back to the main page. What you will likely use Google Books is to search
for specific kinds of books or titles. I will search for a specific book. Oftentimes, like
I said before, you may be trying to track down a book and we may not have it in the
library. Or you may come straight to Google Books to see if it is available. I have a
title Homeland Security Handbook. I can click "search books" and it takes me to the results
page. The results page for Google Books looks almost identity to the result pages for regular
search engine Google. The thing to keep in mind is like regular Google there are ads.
You notice at the top you have the three ads. They're set off in a light pink box. But it
can be hard to tell these are advertisements. If you don't know or are unaware. They're
ads, not mixed in with the rest of the results, but they lead off, start the results at the
very top. So you kind of have to look down below these. You will usually see advertisements
on the right hand side of the screen as well. The more you use this, the better you'll be
at seeing past all of the ads. They are there. Potentially, they could be confusing for new
students. So if we scroll down, if you are searching for a specific book, most often,
it will be at the top of the page, the very first result. Here we have that result. As
we scroll down, we will see other things that came back with that particular search. So
let's take a look at this book and just jump in and see what we have going on. First, before
I do that, I will apologize and book up a second. When you use Google Books there is
something to keep in mind in terms of availability. Not every book will be available for the full
text for you to peruse and look at. We have a list of results, I don't know how many results,
I assume it is many thousands of results. We're not going to be able to see all of these
books. I don't know if we will even be able to see most of the books. There are three
different scenarios that you may encounter when searching for a book. You will either
be able to see all of the book. That happens sometimes. Not all the time, that may be
I shouldn't say whether or not that is in the minority. But you may occasionally encounter
the entire book. You may more often than not encounter a preview of the book. All that
means is that the book is there, but Google has to omit pages every once in a while, just
in agreement with the publishers and copyright law. They can't show you the whole thing,
they can show you some of it. Sometimes you will have a snippet view, which is almost
not there at all, but there will be little snippets of the book that you can look at.
I've never actually been able to use snippet view with much success, but you can get an
idea of what the book is about. You will encounter that they aren't available at all. No preview,
no snippet, can't see in it at all. You will encounter those. I will show you examples.
I'll do that now. We have the list of results. You can tell from the results page what you
will have by paying attention to the individual results. So this book a searched for, Homeland
Security Handbook, you will notice right here, there is a preview link. That tells us there
is a preview to see some of the book. The book below is a snippet view. That means just
little parts. I will show you that in a second. I want to go down and see OK. Here is one.
Homeland security for the Private Sector. No preview. That means there is nothing available
for you to preview within the book itself. That is a quick way to tell what it is you
are dealing with when you look at the results list. Let's chick on this book real quick
and take a peek inside. When you click on the result, this is the page you're presented
with. We'll see we have the book in this views pane on the right hand side of the screen
and then on the left hand side, it is options for tracking it down. It says this is a preview.
The total numbers of pages displayed are limited. You won't be able to read the entire book.
But that is sometimes OK. Sometimes it is just a chapter in the book I want to get my
hands on. Walden book doesn't have it. I wonder what options I have. Sometimes if we come
to Google Books, it will be a preview of it, you can find that chapter and read it. You
might miss an occasional page here or there. Oftentimes you can get enough out of the book
to use that for whatever you needed it for. It does have that value, even though not all
of the pages will be present. So you can scroll down, read the book. Again, you will see,
remind you it is pulling out pages and you can't see everything. You have the option
to read the book here. Now on the left hand side of the screen, we have other panel. A
few things going on here. You will notice about this book link. It gives information
about the link, as you suggest. You can search inside the book, if there is a preview available.
You can enter if there is a particular word or phrase or if there is a topic of some kind,
you can search it to see if it turns anything up. You have the ability to search within
the ebooks. You scroll down. Sometimes there are reviews of the book itself pulling from
different places. There aren't any reviews. Sometimes you will see that is the case. But
potentially, there might be reviews that could be interesting for you. So you have the ability
to learn a little bit about the book. If you are interested in trying to track down this
book in print copy, maybe there isn't a digital version available or, you know, there is just
a preview or whatever or even if it is all there, and you want to find a hard, print
copy of the book, you will notice on the left hand side that there is a "get this book in
print" link. You will see it. I will go back to the viewing pane. We have the same link
here again. If we open this up, we will see that we have some options for different book
sellers. So if you were interested in trying to find this as you know, if you wanted
to purchase this book, you could come here and check it out. Now, there is an interesting
thing about Google Books and the options you will see when using Google Books. Right away,
I am noticing that there isn't a library option here. I will back out, look at another example.
For whatever reason, you will notice this. In certain books or certain screens, it doesn't
display things it normally displays. For example, you will notice that there isn't anything
above the viewing pane. Oftentimes, there are options for different ways to save this
book or view it. I notice when I went down to click the "about this book" link, we have
the ability to add it to your library and then you also have the settings tab, which
disappears from the other screen. It is weird. I don't really know why that's the case, but
it just happens to be so. Sometimes you think there should be a button somewhere, it's just
not there. That's just Google. What I want to do let me find another example here.
OK. This book here, it is an example of a book
that is not available. There is just a snippet, it looks like. Yeah. Instead of the whole
book or preview to look at, if we scroll down, we will see that there is from inside this
book area and it gives you little snippets, based on the home searches I was using. It
just pulls out little bits of the book. For example, this one I'm looking at here isn't
useful at all. Occasionally, you can find at least a snippet of a paragraph or page
that could potentially be useful in determining if the book is of any value to you. This is
what snippet view looks like, if you are curious about that. On the left hand side, again,
we have the ability to search for the book. It is giving us options if we are interested
in purchasing this book. If you are ever interested in purchasing a book, you maybe start with
Amazon. They're typically very competitive, especially if you are tracking down a used
copy of the book. So you have the ability to do that. Now, you should usually see this
link. This "find in a library." I didn't see it in the last book I was looking at, for
some reason. It will oftentimes be there. If you click "find in a library" it will take
us out of Google Books and takes us into a tool called WorldCat. It allows you to search
library collections in your area. We are taken to the WorldCat collection for this book.
We will scroll down, see an enter or collection box. If you type in the ZIP code, it will
generate a list below of all of the libraries around here that contain this particular book.
It can be extremely valuable if you want to track something down. Not interested in paying
for it and no luck online. Depending on where you live, you may have research libraries
you can utilize. You can try this as an option for tracking down books. It will tell you,
you know, what the library is, and you can see over on the right that you can see the
distance of how far the library is. This is a bad example for me, because a thousand miles
away is not useful for me. But more often than not, you will see, especially if you
live in an area where there are colleges, universities, oh, a few miles away, this book
is in this library, maybe I have to travel farther or maybe only a mile away. Oftentimes,
there will be options. If you want to try to track the book down, you can contact the
library and see if you have borrowing privileges of any kind as a community member. Or just
go into the library, sit down at the table, crack the book open and read it. So you do
have the ability to search libraries in your area.
Let me go back to the first example here. Homeland Security Handbook. The "get books
in print" oftentimes there will be the "find in a library" link here. But for some reason
I'm not seeing it. That is where that will be, more often than not. If you are interested
in purchasing the ebook, Google will make that fairly easy for you to do. It will give
you a button, click the button, log in, purchase the ebook, if you wanted to. This is $82.
Chances are you won't want to purchase this. Sometimes books are reasonably priced. It
is an option depending on how excited you before a particular title. That is available
as well. That's a quick overview of what Google Books what the actual Google Books looks
like I will jump back to the search page for a
second because there is a way to manipulate your search that is kind of neat. When you
run a search, you will notice at the top the search tools button, once you're on a search
page. If you click this, you will see menus. You can look on the left and say I only want
to see things if there is a preview, if the ebook is online and I can read it. You can
weed out the books where it is not available at all. Sometimes that is useful. Sometimes
if you don't care, you want to track things down. You may want to leave it at any books,
but depending on your needs, you may want to limit it to "preview available" or something
like that. Come to the any document menu and select books if you want to weed out all the
magazines, anything like that. Then you can specify a specific time period. It can be
very broad. A specific century or you can customize the range. So, you do have the ability
to manipulate your search that way If you come over on the right hand side, you
will notice the gear button. If you click that, you are given options, different settings
to change. Here is an advanced search option. If we click this advanced search option. It
takes us to a page that looks a lot like the old school Google Scholar advanced page, if
you are familiar with that. Here you can tell Google Scholar how to handle the search terms.
If you are looking something for a specific author or put in the author's name or a publisher
you are interested in exploring. Things like that. You have the option to use the advanced
book search as well. Now, here is the weird thing about the advanced search option. With
Google Books, like all Google products, you can log in and create an account. So if you
have a Gmail or use Google Reader, you can sign in to Google Books. If you don't have
one, you may want to create one for using Google Books. The weird thing about signing
in with your account, if you are signed in I'm not signed in right now under my own or
the Walden library account. The advanced search option disappears for some inexplicable reason.
I don't know why that is the case. If you are signed in, it disappeared. I was confused
last night about that, I didn't know that was a fact. You may not need to use the advanced
search option, but for some tricky reason, it won't always be there. Now, in terms of
why you may want to create a Google being, I may come back into this particular book
and actually, need to go to the about this book area. And again, you don't always need
to do this. This "add to my library" button should be displayed on the main screen where
you can read the book itself. If not, you may need to come to the "about this book"
section. When you are signed in, you can add books to your library. If there are particular
titles that are interesting, you would like to save them, come back to them, remember
them for later, you can create a library and add books to the virtual book self. You can
save as you go, if you would like to do that. That is an option. If you start searching
ebooks or want to purchase, you need an account to do that as well. Creating a Google account
may be something to think about. It may make using Google Books easier.
I think that is essentially what I wanted to talk about. I think what I will do now
is mute myself for a moment, see if any questions have come in, and I will come back in a moment,
I'll address those, and we can be on our way. I don't see any questions coming in. I will
definitely hang out just in case anything comes up. I think what I will do is say good
bye, and if you have everything you need, you can move on to lunch or whatever you have
next. I hope this was helpful for you all. It was a pleasure showing off Google Books.
If you have any questions about using this particular resource, you can definitely let
us know. We're happy to help you out. But have a great day and keep in touch.
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