{"id":171,"date":"2006-09-23T23:00:06","date_gmt":"2006-09-24T04:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/china\/2006\/09\/google-books-pdf-download-feature\/"},"modified":"2014-08-30T13:40:10","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T13:40:10","slug":"google-books-pdf-download-feature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2006\/09\/google-books-pdf-download-feature\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Books: PDF Download Feature"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Google Books<\/a> project is an exciting new chapter in the world’s digitization of printed materials together with the Gutenberg project<\/a>. I have blogged<\/a> at Frog in a Well – Korea about some old English-language works on Korea that are available for download in text form from the latter. On my own weblog I have expressed some frustration with the limits imposed by Google Books on the viewing of works which are not protected by copyright here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There has been a recent piece of news about the Google Books project which was announced on the Google Books own weblog here<\/a> at the end of August. Many books that can be found on Google Books, which are out of copyright (or rather, which Google has decided to treat in that manner), can now be completely downloaded in PDF format.<\/p>\n

Some notes about this feature:<\/p>\n

1) The downloaded work is an image PDF, usually 1-15MB in size. The text metadata for each book is not<\/strong> in the downloaded document. This means you cannot search for text within the document once it is downloaded, but must return to Google Books in order to search the contents.
\n2) Some books which a) are no longer protected by copyright b) Google recognizes as no longer being protected by allowing you to browse an unlimited number of pages from the work are strangely not available for download. For example, Miyakawa, Masuji’s My Life in Japan<\/a><\/em>, published in the United States in 1907 can be fully viewed online and is not protected by copyright, cannot be downloaded as of today.
\n3) Many of the old books, especially those which cannot be downloaded despite their lack of copyright coverage, have huge “Image Not Available” error messages where the pages should be. Strangely, you can still search the text metadata for these books and return results. Clicking on the search result pages, however, will simply show “Image Not Available.” Other books have some pages missing but some showing.
\n4) As I have discussed elsewhere, some books which cannot possibly be covered by copyright are only shown in “snippet mode” and in some cases, searching their contents returns completely unexplainable and mistaken results. For example, the 1910 Highways and Homes of Japan<\/em> by lady Kate Lawson is bizarrely shown only in snippet mode and as this snapshot<\/a> shows, searching for “Japan” within the book gives completely wrong results.
\n5. The page images for tables of contents are in many cases hyperlinked. You can click directly on chapter titles in the table of contents to jump to that chapter.<\/p>\n

How to search for books related to China that are out of copyright:<\/p>\n

The easiest way is to search for something specific on the Google Books web site. However, that will return mostly results that are still protected by copyright. See this excellent summary<\/a> of copyright protection at Cornell for how to determine roughly if something is protected that was published in the United States. All things published in the United States before 1923, regardless, are now in the public domain, no exceptions. There is no reason Google should restrict access to those materials insofar as it assumes visitors are viewing the content in the United States (its website says as much in its warning to those outside the US).<\/p>\n

IN TITLE – If you want to search for something in the title, either use the “Advanced Search” link or simply precede your search with “intitle:” For example: intitle:China<\/strong> or intitle:”Treaty Ports in China”<\/strong><\/p>\n

BY DATE – To restrict yourself to the period when all books are in the public domain, you can specify a date year range using “date:” So for example: date:1800-1922<\/strong>. You can also specifi “Full view books” in the advanced search page to see only results in books that can be fully viewed.<\/p>\n

So searching for books with China in the title, published from 1700-1922 can be found by entering: intitle:China date:1700-1922<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some examples of books that can be downloaded completely, just by searching for those with China in the title (including Dewey’s letters from Japan and China):<\/p>\n

An Historical, Geographical, and Philosophical View of the Chinese Empire: Comprehending a…<\/a>
\nBy William Winterbotham 1795<\/p>\n

Odes to Kien Long: The Present Emperor of China; with The Quakers, a Tale; To a Fly, Drowned in a…<\/a>
\nBy Peter Pindar 1792<\/p>\n

Problems of the Far East: Japan, Korea, China<\/a>
\nBy George Nathaniel Curzon 1894<\/p>\n

China, Captive Or Free?: A Study of China’s Entanglements<\/a>
\nBy Gilbert Reid 1921<\/p>\n

A Wayfarer in China: Impressions of a Trip Across West China and Mongolia<\/a>
\nBy Elizabeth Kimball Kendall 1913<\/p>\n

The China Martyrs of 1900: A Complete Roll of the Christian Heros Martyred in China in 1900<\/a>
\nBy Robert Coventry Forsyth 1904<\/p>\n

Railway Enterprise in China<\/a>
\nBy Percy Horace Braund Kent 1907<\/p>\n

Treaty Ports in China: A Study in Diplomacy<\/a>
\nBy En-Sai Tai 1918<\/p>\n

Ordered to China: Letters of Wilbur J. Chamberlin Written from China While Under Commission from…<\/a>
\nBy Wilbur J. Chamberlin 1903<\/p>\n

Religion in China: Containing a Brief Account of the Three Religions of the Chinese with…<\/a>
\nBy Joseph Edkins 1893<\/p>\n

The People of China: Their Country, History, Life, Ideas, and Relations with the Foreigner<\/a>
\nBy J. W. (John William) Robertson Scott 1900<\/p>\n

Opium-smoking in America and China<\/a>
\nBy H. H. (Harry Hubbell) Kane 1882<\/p>\n

Rambles in Central China<\/a>
\nBy W. Arthur (William Arthur) Cornaby 1896<\/p>\n

Old China and Young America<\/a>
\nBy Sarah (Pike) Conger 1913<\/p>\n

China Through the Stereoscope: A Journey Through the Dragon Empire at the Time of the Boxer…
\n<\/a>By James Ricalton 1901<\/p>\n

Buddhism in China<\/a>
\nBy Samuel Beal 1884<\/p>\n

The Provinces of Western China<\/a>
\nBy Pruen 1906<\/p>\n

The Great Empress Dowager of China<\/a>
\nBy Philip Walsingham Sergeant 1911<\/p>\n

One of China’s Scholars: The Culture & Conversion of a Confucianist<\/a>
\nBy Howard Taylor 1904<\/p>\n

Letters from China and Japan<\/a>
\nBy John Dewey, Harriet Alice Chipman Dewey 1920<\/p>\n

The Taeping Rebellion in China: Its Origins, Progress, and Present Condition<\/a>
\nBy W. H. (William Henry) Sykes 1863<\/p>\n

The Diseases of China, including Formosa and Korea<\/a>
\nBy W. Hamilton (William Hamilton) Jefferys 1910<\/p>\n

Five Years in China: From 1842 to 1847<\/a>
\nBy Frederick E. (Frederick Edwyn) Forbes 1848<\/p>\n

The Manchus, Or The Reigning Dynasty of China: Their Rise and Progress<\/a>
\nBy John Ross 1891<\/p>\n

Contributions towards the materia medica & natural history of China<\/a>
\nBy F. Porter (Frederick Porter) Smith 1871<\/p>\n

A Retrospect of the First Ten Years of the Protestant Mission to China: (now, in Connection with…<\/a>
\nBy William Milne 1820<\/p>\n

The Jesuits in China and the Legation of Cardinal de Tournon: An Examination of Conflicting…<\/a>
\nBy Robert C. (Robert Charles) Jenkins 1894<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Google Books project is an exciting new chapter in the world’s digitization of printed materials together with the Gutenberg project. I have blogged at Frog in a Well – Korea about some old English-language works on Korea that are available for download in text form from the latter. On my own weblog I have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[100,165,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-china","category-english"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-2L","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5014,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/5014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}