From the Google Book Search mail bag

Thursday, May 18, 2006 at 9:40 AM

Posted by Ryan Sands, Book Search Support Team

As a regular feature on this blog, we'll be addressing questions from our users, including questions about how to get the most out of Book Search.

This week, Pavan asks:

If I want to see only full-view books, how do I do it?

You can limit your search to full-view books right from the Book Search homepage. Simply click the 'Full view books' button and enter your search term as you usually do -- you'll get results limited to full-view titles, including public domain titles and books that publishers have chosen to display in full view.

Whenever you use Book Search, we strive to give you the most relevant books for the search terms you enter -- but sometimes, you're looking for something quite specific. Limiting your search to full-view books is just one of the Advanced Search options we've developed to help you find what you're looking for. Here's a brief tour through some of the others.

• Say you loved Fahrenheit 451 in high school, and you're looking for other novels or short stories by the incomparable Ray Bradbury. Try searching by author.


• Or suppose you're trying to track down Scott Westerfeld's great young-adult horror novel, Midnighters (and its sequel). You can easily search by title.


• Or maybe you're an ardent supporter of small publishers like Small Beer Press, and you want to check out the latest titles. Try limiting your search to a particular publisher.


• Or you're looking for historical perspective on current affairs, and you want to see references to Iran from the years 1500-1900. Try searching by publication date.


• You're sure that you've heard the Google Scholar tagline, "Stand on the shoulders of giants" before? Find out if you're right by searching by exact phrase.

We hope this was helpful. If you have a question you'd like us to answer or ideas for improving Book Search, we encourage you to drop us a line and let us know.