I don't know if there are that many people around that are at that level...I can't say I would have ever though of it either - Sir Shuping

Picked it up from a Blyberg post. To me, it seems like a complex way to do a simple analog task digitally, but that's me. - Walt Crawford

depends on the quality of the index... I can think of some books where I'd prefer the word-search. having the choice doesn't seem like a bad thing. - D0r0th34

I love that some of the old texts that I'm using in my dissertation are in Google Books b/c the index in those texts rarely lists what I'm looking for. Since I now know the jargon used in the articles I want, I can search for them much easier via the search instead of skimming each page of the book. Having said that, I'd still look at the index in the physical book first for most things. - Katy S

Smartphones have barcode scanners? - Julian

iphone app store has quite a few, yes. I can't test any of them because my Touch has no camera. - D0r0th34

Um, yeah, actually, that would be an awesome way to search for word patterns in literature. . . novels and poetry and such generally doesn't come with an index. But I'd probably start by poking around in the catalog and Google Books from my home, rather than going through that set of steps. But, hey, some people like to take notes on index cards, which seems like madness to me. - laura x

Laura x - me too, but sadly the things I'm looking for aren't included in the index because at the time the index was created, it wasn't considered important (hmmmm....perhaps a lesson regarding my dissertation research). Having the full-text search is such a time saver. I seriously skimmed through every page of Library Journal, Public Libraries, and several state library associations' journals for the years 1910-1925. It was quite a slog. - Katy S

Also, many books don't have an index, especially older ones. And then there's fiction, poetry, plays, etc. with no indexes either. Of course, those older books won't have a barcode either. But then maybe your library will have barcoded the books and you're clever enough to have found a way to link your catalog records to Google Book Search. - Stephen Francoeur

Interesting thread. I guess there are cases when you really want to full-text search *one book that you're actually holding in your hand*. (By "you" I mean "not me," since I don't even carry a dumb phone most of the time, much less a Droid-level one.) - Walt Crawford

Well, technically, if I'm in the library already I probably have my laptop. With the assumption that I can connect to a wireless network, I'd access google books using my laptop. I prefer a bigger screen. - Katy S

Oh yeah. I picked a recent art history book at random which would be a perfect example for this. It had no index, so a Google Books search made it obvious in seconds that it was actually useful for the student project I had in mind. - Steve is older than ever

OK, I give. (Not enough to go buy a smartphone, but that's me.) - Walt Crawford

It's a nice bit of bricolage. Now, I want to see somebody mash up ONIX, GBooks, and the OPAC to produce an Amazonesque "search inside this book" suitable for an OPAC item display. (For extra credit, FRBRize the whole thing, so that one can search the text of a book for which GBooks has *any* edition.) - D0r0th34

Yes, I did my searching with a dumb computer. - Steve is older than ever

In the end, that post is saying Google Books Index is better than the book's own index. - Jeff Scott

I would think that would be hard to say definitively, since it would depend greatly on the book in question and its index and, even more, on what exactly the searcher was searching for. - laura x

And, of course, whether Google Books included the book--and whether the scan was good enough. - Walt Crawford

Of course, with Google Books, you get the bonus content of finger spam in your index: http://linkbun.ch/gsji - Stephen Francoeur

I always show Google Books in IL classes -- it really opens up our print collection to students, especially those researching more obscure topics. - John Dupuis

@D we have a search inside the book link from many of our opac records - works with amazon, gbooks, hathi... lemme look for a decent link - oh, but it doesn't work for LICENSED books (of course) - Christina Pikas

hah! cool. mashups by smarter people than I am FTW. - D0r0th34

https://catalog.library.jhu.edu/ipac20... - Christina Pikas

come to think of it - but it would be really slow - 2 of our big engineering ebook collections are metasearchable, there's no reason we couldn't do a search inside the book... well, would be too slow, i'm thinking. - Christina Pikas