Happy holidays

Sunday, December 24, 2006 at 10:08 PM

Posted by Agnes Eymery, Google Book Search Support Team

As a child growing up in France, my grandma used to read me stories on Christmas Eve -- my favorite was always "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. My grandfather told me that merchandising masks the true value of the holidays and that "the real importance is to be together." I always asked myself what it was like for others celebrating around the world: did children in Austria or Australia celebrate the way we did?

A few weeks ago, I came across a book about family gatherings, highlighting the importance of being with the people we love during the holidays. Of course, food is a big part of any holiday celebration, and at my house everyone lends a helping hand to prepare delicious dishes and desserts. Every year, we try new recipes, and this year I'm supposed to prepare a panettone farcito to complement my mother's traditional Yule log. Thanks to Google Book Search, I found a great book of Italian Desserts which includes the recipe I needed. A feast to look out for!

Whichever holidays you're about to celebrate, we hope you're able to enjoy the company of family and friends and the traditions you hold dear. Happy holidays from the Google Book Search team! We'll see you in 2007. Read the full post 0 comments

Taking flight with Google Book Search

Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 10:46 PM

Posted by Jim Gerber, Content Partnerships Director

As a private pilot of both airplanes and helicopters, it doesn't take much to get me thinking about all things aviation. The passing of a major milestone, such as the December 17th anniversary of the Wright brothers' famous first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, is certain to fuel those flames. So this past weekend, as I thought about the birth of aviation, I turned to Google Book Search to see what was happening at the time of the Wright brothers' flight and check out some more recent developments.

Looking back to the early development of the airplane, it's clear that man's attempts to achieve flight go back centuries before the Wright brothers. Some of the earliest studies of flight are visible in Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings, which date back to the 15th century, as Robert Kane chronicles in his book Air Transportation. To get some historical perspective on early aviation, I looked at A Short History of Balloons and Flying Machines, published in 1907, just a few years after the Wright brothers first took flight. It attributes the first known mention of flight to the Greek myth "Daedalus and Icarus" and contains a lot of useful information about early attempts to develop flying contraptions, such as human-mounted wings and balloons capable of carrying passengers.

Certainly one of the biggest differences in aviation today is the cost and scale of development. It's interesting to observe the development of the next generation of space flight as accomplished by Burt Rutan and the team heading up SpaceShipOne. Privately funded space flight certainly takes more money than a couple of bicycle shop owners like Orville and Wilbur Wright might have had at their disposal. In fact, SpaceShipOne was funded by the billionaire investor Paul Allen. What I find interesting is the fact that this amazing accomplishment also marks a return of progress at the cutting edge of aviation -- space flight -- to the private sector. Although this milestone occurred only two years ago, there are some interesting chronicles of SpaceShipOne, as well as other new developments in aviation, in Space Tourism: Adventures in Earth's Orbit and Beyond. You can take any one of these titles for a test flight with Google Book Search, then click on one of the retail links to buy the book and begin your own flight of fancy... Read the full post 0 comments

The Library Project: Two years in

Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 2:36 PM

Posted by Laura DeBonis, Director, Library Partnerships

It was two years ago today that we first announced the Library Project and our first five library partners (Harvard University, the University of Michigan, the New York Public Library, Oxford University, and Stanford University). Together, book by book, we're digitizing these libraries' rich collections and making them discoverable and searchable online. We've already heard countless stories from students, researchers, and readers whose searches have led them to books from the vast collections of our library partners. One of our favorites is from Jan Perrier, a librarian in suburban New Jersey. She wrote:

A college student was home for the weekend and was here to do research for a paper on juvenile delinquency in London in the mid-19th century. Roxbury public library is a typical suburban library -- we have lots of cookbooks, car repair manuals, Danielle Steele books, James Patterson books -- we don't have any books at all on juvenile delinquency in London in the mid-19th century... We plugged a few key search words [into Google Book Search.] Within a few seconds we had a list of books; she found [a public domain] book that was held at Harvard University Library, and within minutes, was actually reading the book online.

(You can also see Jan tell her story in Google Video).

What else has happened? Well, our group of five initial partners has grown to nine, as we've since announced partnerships with four additional libraries: the University of California, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Complutense University of Madrid, and the University of Virginia. We are honored to work with this amazing collection of partners and look forward to hearing more stories like the one from Jan. Read the full post 0 comments

Introducing Google Patent Search

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 at 5:42 PM

Posted by Ryan Sands, Google Book Search Support Team and Google Patent Search Support Specialist

Using much of the familiar technology that you've come to love for browsing books on Google Book Search, you can now search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus -- from early 18th century patents to recent ones from 2006 -- with Google Patent Search. History buffs will have a blast investigating Henry Ford's motor patents, and genealogists might just enjoy trying to find patents assigned to long lost relatives. Personally, I loved poring over a groundbreaking method for inducing hypnosis, as well as this 1920s hairnet and this 1960s "display device" (aka lava lamp).

For more information, check out our post on the Google blog or try out Google Patent Search for yourself! Read the full post 0 comments

"A book, any book, is for us a sacred object"

Monday, December 04, 2006 at 4:41 PM

Posted by Dan Abbe, Google Book Search Support Team

Un libro, cualquier libro, es para nosotros un objeto sagrado.
A book, any book, is for us a sacred object.
- Jorge Luis Borges, “Del culto de los libros”/“On the Cult of Books”

Last week, the Google Book Search team took a trip to Guadalajara, Mexico, to participate in the 20th annual Feria Internacional del Libro, or International Book Fair. It’s just about the biggest book fair in the Spanish-speaking world, drawing book lovers from all over Mexico and publishers from all over Latin America, as well as Spain and even Switzerland, Germany and France. We were happy to be there to talk about Google Book Search with our users and partners.


The fair was a true celebration of books. As much as it’s nice to have access to a wide range of titles in a huge online bookstore, it’s hard to match the experience of wandering through aisles and aisles of books from around the world. Many of the books at the fair won’t appear for sale on even the largest of megasites, which don’t often carry books from small publishers in Mexico, Peru or Cuba.

Borges’ phrase rings true for the experience of the fair, where there were many beautiful volumes designed to produce the most pleasant effects in a reader. There’s something especially gratifying about acquiring a book at a fair like this: you can wind up having a chat with the very person who dedicated themselves to producing the “sacred object” that you’re about to purchase. A sense of Borges’ “us” comes out in these interactions, where a common appreciation of books isn’t so much the impetus for a conversation as its ground. We’re readers too, and we certainly hope to be able to celebrate our appreciation of books with you at more and more book fairs in the future. Read the full post 0 comments