We have discussed Google Books before on this website.
One of my new found relatives was discussing some Revolutionary War ancestors that she had in Onondaga County and so I looked them up in my own copy of Rev. William Beauchamp's, "Revolutionary Soldiers Resident or Dying in Onondaga County, N.Y." - 1913 - Onondaga Historical Association, Syracuse, NY
I had paid over $100 for this gem several years ago. So I went on Google Books, did a search, and sure enough they had a copy digitized online and available as a free download.
There is a certain thing to be aware of in Google's scanning and digitizing process. While the digital version is online at Google, you can use the full search box method of finding anything you want. Once you download it to your own computer, you are able to view it in all it's glory with Adobe Reader because the files are pure pdf files. Unfortunately the pdf search tool does not work once it is on your own storage medium.
I'm not sure why that is but must have something to do with the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software that Google uses. Well anyway you can have your own copy to browse at will and you can't beat the price.
While you are there do some searching and you will be amazed at what is online and free.
To read our previous Blog about Google Books, go HERE:
http://ny-genes.blogspot.com/2007/03/google-books-libravox.html
To read our previous Blog about Revolutionary War Soldiers in Onondaga County go HERE:
http://ny-genes.blogspot.com/2007/12/1931-syracuse-newspaper-story-about-dar.html
To go to Google Books go HERE:
http://books.google.com
Visit our main website at www.unyg.com
2 comments:
Isn't that great, Dick! I found a book on Methodists in a certain district which contained my circuit-riding ancestor. I didn't know that about the search capabilities disappearing after downloading. One thing that makes it easier to just keep it online is the ability to add them to "My Library" on the books.google.com page. That makes them easy to go back to for reference.
Patti,
That is excellent! I'm very happy for you and this type of comment is just what makes the blogosphere go round. That is a very good idea also about keeping them online. Some of the books I actually download and put on a thumbdrive, so I'll have them with me when I'm out and about/
Thanks for the tip.
Dick
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