All,
I just discovered something new (for me at least) about Google Books. I
looked at an older posting of mine on my blog and found this link to the
Royal Commission report on the management of the British Museum (where
Panizzi's catalog is discussed), and the link was:
http://books.google.com/ebooks?id=ajFDAAAAcAAJ which used to go into the
normal Google Books interface but now it throws me into the books
section of Google Play. It turns out that when I am on Google Play, I
cannot find a way to download the pdf except (apparently) by downloading
an app (free), although I haven't done this yet because I do not want
the app. Reading on Google Play is also inferior, in my opinion.
The original interface still exists however, where I can just download
the pdf: http://books.google.com/books?id=ajFDAAAAcAA. The difference is
in the URL, from the
http://books.google.com/books (regular interface)
http://books.google.com/ebooks (Google Play interface)
It doesn't seem to work for all books. Full view or preview mode seems
always to have an Google Play interface, while snippet view or no view
may or may not have a Google play interface, e.g. a book with a snippet
view: http://books.google.com/books?id=I5cb5M4OgQgC, and the
http://books.google.com/ebooks?id=I5cb5M4OgQgC gets a zero result.
But here is one by Ann Rice (no ebook available)
http://books.google.com/books?id=uxd4r90RMsgC which actually redirects
the URL to a page, although you cannot get the book through Google Play.
I can't find anyone else who has mentioned this change to Google Books,
but I would suspect that Google will change its Google Books interface
over to the Google Play completely, thereby making the pdf download
available *only through their app*, which will give them tons and tons
more information to play with.
I thought I should share this discovery.
--
*James Weinheimer* weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com
*First Thus* http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
*First Thus Facebook Page* https://www.facebook.com/FirstThus
*Cooperative Cataloging Rules*
http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
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http://blog.jweinheimer.net/p/cataloging-matters-podcasts.html
Received on Tue Jun 11 2013 - 03:49:42 EDT