Ran across this great blog post today of a student doing research for her dissertation.

I was idly trying a search on “roads” to see what sort of a
literature would turn up for the period of my dissertation research,
1740-1850. I didn’t expect much. I’ve spent the last two years
wandering through the Yale, Harvard, and California libraries, the
British Library, Britain’s National Archives, and the immense reserves
of North American Inter Library Loan reading every book on London,
pavement, or travel I could get my hands on.

Surprise. In a single idle search I just added twenty extra full-text books to my list.

Which are, by the way, full-text searchable –

– and subject to word-count analysis –

– and replete with full illustrations –

– and instantly digestable into visuals for powerpoint presentations.

Hallelujah, GoogleBooks. And holy mackeral! Good work.

See, I’m not crazy when I say Google Books is amazing and awesome!!  Check it out if you haven’t yet!