Google Book Search clarifies the four ways that it displays digitized books. (See the site for illustrations.)
Full view. For books in Full View, you can view the entire book. These include books that we've verified are in the public domain, or those that the publisher or author has decided to make fully browsable. Some examples of materials presented in Full View (in the U.S.) are Charles Sumner's eulogy for Abraham Lincoln from 1865 and a collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories from 1903.
Limited Preview. For books that fall into this category, you can view a limited number of pages. These books have been submitted through our Partner Program by copyright holders in order to enable you to find and browse (and purchase!) their books. A few examples include Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events series, or the late Octavia Butler's powerful novel Kindred.
Snippet view. Books that may still be in copyright that we don't receive through the Partner Program are displayed in Snippet View. For these books, you can view a few sentences in addition to bibliographic information. For example, you can view mentions of China in the 1937 report, Japan in Jeopardy, or check out references to man-eating sharks in the 1940's title This Amazing Planet.
No preview. For some books -- like dictionaries -- we display only basic information about the books. You're still searching the full text of these books from books.google.com, so you'll be able to figure out if your search term appears anywhere within the book, even if it's not in the title or index. You can find out details about Webster's New World Crossword Puzzle Dictionary or see basic information about this Pocket English-Bengali Dictionary.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/06/2006 08:44:00 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.
