Google+Books

=**__[|Google Books]__**=

**__Resources links__**
>
 * An introduction to Google Books: http://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/about.html
 * After numerous lawsuits and lots of negative press, Google has forged a Settlement and Agreement with authors and publishers. Read more:[| http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/]
 * New York Review of Books article “Google & the Future of Books” provides commentary by Harvard professor, Robert Darnton: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22281
 * See “About this Book” example of __Fast Food Nation__: http://books.google.com/books?id=yNFN1OpnkBkC
 *  Google has a partner program with many publishers. This is the link to information on the [|partner program].
 * Get[|1.5 million free books] on Google and your iphone
 * An article on plagiarism found on Google Books:[| http://www.slate.com/id/2153313/]
 * June 10th, 2009 New York Times article on [|Google's Anti-Trust Settlement]
 * Tour of Google Books __ [] __


 * __SWOT Analysis__**

**Strengths** >
 * Provides free access to many out-of-print and copyright-expired texts.
 * Uses the power of the Google search engine to search down to page level.
 * Provides researcher with limited- and full-view results.
 * Shows results with some magazine articles which are often difficult to find.
 * Features “About this book” pages: contents, selected pages, popular passages, reviews, references from the Web, books, and scholarly works, related books, key terms, and a Google Map “places mentioned” interface.
 * Allows researcher to add Google Book results to My Library by signing into your Google account.
 * Provides book reviews
 * Provides several ways to search books
 * Download free PDF copies of works in the Public Domain.
 * Instant access to a plethora of books
 * Use Web History to locate books by recent searches
 * You can import books into your personal virtual library
 * Allows you to make annotations
 * Turns students’ computers into a worldwide library.
 * Schools do not need to own every book in their library for student use
 * Spur-of-the-moment & last minute reliable research resource
 * Weaknesses**
 * Certain publishers do not allow any or only limited access to their collection of works.
 * Copyright organizations still have many concerns about limits to Google’s legal power to digitize works.
 * Some images may be unreadable due to poor scanning.
 * Limited-preview books give just a few pages of a chapter then skip a few pages….
 * Link to “Buy this Book” goes to Amazon.com = $$$ for Google.
 * Recent problems in courts over plagiarism and anti-trust law.
 * There is no listing of magazines to browse. You have to search for magazines by title.
 * Images under copyright are blanked out. Almost every picture is missing from books like encyclopedias.
 * Long term reading of text on computer screen can be laborious for the eyes.
 * Need to transfer book to a PDF to highlight words/phrases/sentences

**Opportunities**
 * Google gives access to works for anyone who has an Internet connection.
 * Allows more than one person can look at the same book simultaneously.
 * Focuses students on the importance of print sources in today’s electronic revolution.
 * Find materials on a wide variety of subjects and genres to help create a print-rich classroom.
 * Conveys importance of digitization to the future of knowledge.
 * Users can write reviews.
 * With further development, could end the need for media centers to keep old copies of past periodicals.
 * A social networking feature (i.e. comments at a minimum) would add a new dynamic to the book.
 * Use the advanced search feature to enhance searches.
 * Saves a lot of time searching in a library for a resource to fit your specific need. Instead, you can search your topic and book suggestions are made.

**Threats** Ideas for the classroom **
 * Books are not reviewed for bias, authority, or other forms of merit evaluation.
 * Possibility exists of advertising/financial conflict of interest with other Google properties.
 * Book content may be inappropriate for all ages.
 * Sponsored links tend to align with book content so commercial ads are present and may not be appropriate for all ages.
 * Possibility exists that students are not getting a full spectrum of results, lessening the opportunities they have to learn.
 * Will probably be the beginning of the end of printed materials.
 * Materials produced by a search for a specific topic may be taken out of context if the student does not read enough of the chapter/book.
 * Teach students the importance of keyword searching, as well as value of Table of Contents and Indexes.
 * Teach students about interlibrary loans the book by clicking on “Find this book in a library link.”
 * Find one important piece of information (even from a limited-preview page) to incorporate into research.
 * Teachers could spark student interest by previewing several book.
 * Teachers can use the ads in the magazines to study marketing.
 * The entire class can have access to the same issue of a magazine, virtually impossible to do otherwise.
 * Teachers could encourage students to create a personal library of books and share comments and stories with other students (sort of like show and tell for books.)
 * Teachers can task students with finding multiple books on a particular subject and task them with doing a book review of one or all books.
 * Compare and contrast magazine ads to those of today.
 * Class-wide book reports/school-wide required summer reading could be assigned without the school needing to own enough hard copies for every student or parents needing to purchase every book.