Sunday, June 21, 2009

Improved Google Book tools and functions

This week Google announced a number of improvements to Google Books making it easier for users to share and publish full view and partner book content. Improvements include easily embedding book pages from Google Books on blogs and sites, and providing direct links to specific book pages.

Other improvements include improved search within a book, and displaying more context around the search term, with images to navigate directly to the target book pages and sorting results by relevance. There is now a contents drop-down menu allowing direct navigation to specific chapters in books or articles in magazines.

Those interested in historical texts and research will especially value a plain text display now provided to make it easier to see and share public domain book content. Google Books continues to offer a pdf download option for books not under copyright protection in the reader’s jurisdiction. To see books that are full view, select “Full view only” in the “Books Showing” box at top left of the search results page.

The announcement post at the Google Book Search blog has more detail and examples of the new functions and enhancements.

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