bmattock
Veteran
For those who might be interested, Google has scanned and put online a lot of books, including full text of some which have expired copyrights. They're easy to find, you can search them, most have been converted to text as well as the original scans, you can download them as PDF files, and you can store them in your 'library' if you're signed up as a Google user (free).
Here is the URL for the 'advanced' search:
http://www.google.com/advanced_book_search
As an example, I entered "Photography" under 'find results' and then ticked the radio buttons for 'full text only' and 'books'. I could also have chosen a particular date range, author, or etc, but for this example, I wanted to keep it simple.
I clicked the 'Google Search' button and got over 6,100 results. I just took the first one I saw as an example:
"Photography: Being Simple Simple Chapters for Beginners on the Art and Practice of Photography," by Rev. A.H. Blake, M.A., published in 1901.
This particular book might not be of any interest to some photographers, being as it is so old. However, it might be a fascinating history of the practice of photography as it existed in the early 1900's. There are lots of books like that, most older (since the copyright had to expire before the entire text could be made available for free download as a PDF). Some are much newer, and you can read them entirely online, but cannot download them, due to the copyright not being expired.
However, you don't just have to search for 'photography'. For people into home developing and doing their own custom chemistry, try 'photographic chemistry' and see what you come up with. Or try 'pictorialism' or 'ansel adams' or 'josef maria eder' etc. I'm sure you can some up with some interesting searches and some equally interesting results.
Good luck and happy hunting. Hope this information is of use to some of you.
Here is the URL for the 'advanced' search:
http://www.google.com/advanced_book_search
As an example, I entered "Photography" under 'find results' and then ticked the radio buttons for 'full text only' and 'books'. I could also have chosen a particular date range, author, or etc, but for this example, I wanted to keep it simple.
I clicked the 'Google Search' button and got over 6,100 results. I just took the first one I saw as an example:
"Photography: Being Simple Simple Chapters for Beginners on the Art and Practice of Photography," by Rev. A.H. Blake, M.A., published in 1901.
This particular book might not be of any interest to some photographers, being as it is so old. However, it might be a fascinating history of the practice of photography as it existed in the early 1900's. There are lots of books like that, most older (since the copyright had to expire before the entire text could be made available for free download as a PDF). Some are much newer, and you can read them entirely online, but cannot download them, due to the copyright not being expired.
However, you don't just have to search for 'photography'. For people into home developing and doing their own custom chemistry, try 'photographic chemistry' and see what you come up with. Or try 'pictorialism' or 'ansel adams' or 'josef maria eder' etc. I'm sure you can some up with some interesting searches and some equally interesting results.
Good luck and happy hunting. Hope this information is of use to some of you.
