How Google books is changing academic history
By “J”
Google Book Search is a relatively recent phenomenon… six months ago, right? About six months ago I was pottering around there, finding a few illustrated nineteenth-century texts, a lot of contemporary books for sale, and not much of too much interest.
Six months turns out to be a long time in book land. In that period of time, Book Search has accomplished enough to transform the academic profession.
I was idly trying a search on “roads” to see what sort of a literature would turn up for the period of my dissertation research, 1740-1850. I didn’t expect much. I’ve spent the last two years wandering through the Yale, Harvard, and California libraries, the British Library, Britain’s National Archives, and the immense reserves of North American Inter Library Loan reading every book on London, pavement, or travel I could get my hands on.
Surprise. In a single idle search I just added twenty extra full-text books to my list.
Which are, by the way, full-text searchable –
– and subject to word-count analysis –
– and replete with full illustrations –
– and instantly digestable into visuals for powerpoint presentations.
Hallelujah, GoogleBooks. And holy mackeral! Good work.
By now, the first half of the nineteenth century exists in a very complete form on Google Books. In the last six months, while academic history has meandered in its habituated paths of grinding research, the possibilities of scholarship have been utterly transformed.
(Read on at the URL above)

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