I have to agree with Michael Fitzgerald, Google Books and Amazon are
great, but they are a just a portion of the published printed material
out there. There is a lot of stuff that is not there and will never be
there. Also, assuming what you're looking for is there, it isn't always
easy to find it. Try finding vol. 6 of Sabin's Bibliotheca Americana.
Or, tell me if The controversy between M.B. and Quaero (Alexandria :
Samuel Snowden, 1818) is in Parsons's Early Catholic Americana. The
information is there, but I think you would find it a lot easier to look
up Sabin or Parsons in a library catalog and go to the shelves and look
at them.
A related issue was posted to the EXLIBRIS list by Bob Kosovsky at NYPL:
"Someone in a remote location wanted a copy of a large section of one of
our rare books. It hadn't been microfilmed and photocopying 100+ pages
would have been a strain on the volume. So I checked Google Books - lo
and behold, it was there. Since the volume was from 1869, it was
treated
as many public domain books on Google Books - it could be copied or
downloaded. So I gave the link to the correspondent and I thought that
was that.
The correspondent - who I believe was writing from either Germany or
France -- told me that their version of Google Books was not like mine.
There was no ability to either copy or download the book. More than
that,
they said that for this 1869 volume, they only got snippet views."
YMMV.
Patrick Cates
Technical Services Librarian
St. Mark's Library
General Theological Seminary
175 Ninth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
212-243-5150 x354
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Received on Thu May 07 2009 - 11:14:36 EDT