Visit [Google Book Search]. Search for downloadable books by clicking on the “Full view books” radio button before entering your search terms. Once you select a book from your results, you'll see a “Download” button on the right side of the page if the book is out of copyright. Click the button to download a PDF of the book to your computer. Once the book is downloaded, you can print it and read it at your own pace.
The new answer:
While there is no way to restrict search results to downloadable books only, you can limit your results to books that are fully viewable by using the Advanced Search feature of Google Book Search. Just select the “Full view only” option, enter your search terms and click “Google Search.” Although not all books that are fully viewable are also downloadable as PDF files, this will help narrow your search results closer to books that are downloadable.
Comments
After some initial uncertainty, I've decided that this is just a change of language, not a change of functionality. Google always distinguished downloadable books from "full view" books, and always allowed users to limit searches to full-view books. It hasn't made it harder to find either kind of book. When full-view books are also downloadable, the "download" button still appears on the book's page (example). However, the new answer no longer tells users about the download button.
The suspicious might complain that Google has made it slightly harder for new users to understand that some of the books are actually downloadable. But even the new language acknowledges that some books are downloadable, and another question in the FAQ still talks about the download button explicitly.
Note that Google only makes public-domain books available for downloading and the recent settlement only affects copyrighted books. Or, to be more precise, Google only makes a subset of PD books available for downloading (namely, those that it is sure are PD, erring on the side of caution), and the settlement only affects a subset of copyrighted books (namely, those that are out of print or no longer "commercially available"). Hence, at least for now, I'm not thinking that the change of language is a side-effect of the settlement.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/06/2008 10:47:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
