Google Books (EN): Find out more

The content of Google Books comes from three sides:

1. The Library Project: Google scans millions of books from large libraries in various countries;
2. Partner Programme: electronic versions of (newer) books form hundreds of publishers are made searchable;
3. Worldwide  catalogues: of other books Google sometimes only has the title data. It is suspected that they come from the worldwide catalogue WorldCat.

In Google Books you can save your books in My Library. You  need a Google account to do so.

In My Library you can

• save titles and arrange folders;
•  indicate what you have already read and what you still need to read;
• add notes to your books;
•  share lists with titles on a particular discipline, project or topic with others.

Every book contains a page "About this book" containing general bibiographic data such as title, author, year of publication, number of pages and subject. With the help of these data, it is easy to create references.

In the list of results you will see which version is shown. There are four options: 

• Full text: you can read the entire text: usually copyright free books from library collections
• Part of the text: if the publisher or author has given permission, you can view a limited number of pages
• Only fragments: contains information about the book, with a few fragments ( a few sentences with the search term in its context)
• No example available: you will only find the title description of the book. If you have an exact title you could check Worldcat to see what library holds the book in its collection

As in other Google sites there are clear differences between the .nl and.com version":

• Ranking: the Dutch version puts books in the Dutch language higher in the results list, and the other way around! This is especially the case in searching for proper names that are equal in both languages.
• Subject terms: in the .com version you can also search by subject/keywords, 
• Bookshop links: the Dutch version also contains links to Dutch bookshops.
• Google eBooks: the Dutch version has the option to restrict to "Google eBooks". We advise you to always select "any books".