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Google books
#1
Everybody will have heard of the kerfuffle over Google's plan to scan shedloads (or rather library-loads) of books and put them online. The dumure sound of fainting publishers was only drowned out by the rumble of lawyers rushing for a slice of the action as the ultimate copyright mega-lawsuit hove into view. Now, some time later, publishers are beginning to admit that it has actually helped sales in some cases (who'd have thought that? See under 'no publicity is bad publicity', chaps...) and books.google.com is an established, if largely ignored, feature of the Googlemonster (which still promises it won't do 'evil').

So, type books.google.com into the address line of your browser, put 'roman army' as your search term and what do you get? A lot of stuff that is a 'limited preview' (or 'free advert' to the cynical ;-). I chose a book by one of our RAT members, something called Roman Military Clothing (1): 100 BC-Ad 200 by Graham Sumner (note that annoying little lowercase 'd' in AD -- where did that come from? It's certainly not evident anywhere on the book) and what you get is the front and back covers in full glorious technicolo[u]r (removable 'u' for our American cousins), the title page in monochrome (pretty much the front cover again, so a waste of a page I would venture), the contents page, a couple of consecutive editorial pages, and the index.

As an advert for Graham's book I think it works well (although not as well as walking into a bookshop and browsing through the book itself -- which is how I buy most WWI aviation titles (am I paying for new photos I haven't seen before or is it all the 'same old same old' etc etc?) -- but as an aspect of the Googlepresence, I have to question its value. Since only two pages of the editorial content are visible, Google presumably do not index the rest (I am open to correction on this) so, ultimately, is this any different to Amazon's Look Inside feature? Answers on a postcard please.

Meanwhile, Graham, I hope this curious piece of Googlification acts as a sales boost!

Mike Bishop
You know my method. It is founded upon the observance of trifles

Blogging, tweeting, and mapping Hadrian\'s Wall... because it\'s there
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