Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Google Books - A research library trip without the library or the trip

Google Books made my day this afternoon. I was looking for an important article on Josephus' understanding of prophets in the following arcane-sounding volume: Josephus' Contra Apionem: Studies in Its Character and Context with a Latin Concordance to the Portion Missing in Greek. Published by Brill, it retails for the low price of $193.68 US at Barnes & Noble.com. The Latin concordance has no doubt contributed to sales, but it is not exactly a bestseller. For some reason our library does not own a copy.

Fortunately for me, Google has the whole book scanned. With the help of Gadwin's free PrintScreen program, I was able to make screen shots of the whole essay, trim them in Paint, and print them out:
More time-consuming than a photocopy, but a whole lot easier than driving to the nearest research library that has a copy of the book!

Another thing that made me happy this afternoon was the first installment of my order from R.G. Mitchell's review program:Alas, it remains true that acquiring books and articles is easier than reading them. To work!

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