Google Books

I read two passages from Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems on Google Books.  The first was “HOPE is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard ; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.” The second was “After great pain a formal feeling comes — The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs ; The stiff Heart questions — was it He that bore ? And yesterday — or centuries before?” I find reading on the screen to be a different experience than reading on the page, but I think it is good to have the opportunity. I would not like to read a whole book of the screen, but it is useful for scanning a book to see if it is one I would like to read in paper form. For example, I subscribe to an email book club. I read 20 or so pages of a book in my email, and then decide if I would like to check it out of the library.

I generally find Google Books to be more effective for research than CUNY+. One advantage is what I have already mentioned: that I can often preview a book to see if it is useful to me. In ENG101, I had to do a research paper on an urban legend, and I choose a topic that was rather obscure and hard to find information on because it was a local legend. It was very important for me to be able to see some of the book to determine if it was going to be useful to me. Some books may have made brief reference to the legend, but not contained enough information to use in a paper. I can even search within the book for specific terms. Although most books are limited preview rather than full view, I can usually see enough of the book to determine if I want to find it in paper form. Also, since it was a rather unusual topic, the CUNY library system did not have the books I needed. With Google Books, I was able to search many libraries at once, and found my books at the New York Public Library Main Branch. Google Books allows you to search all public and academic libraries within a given distance of your ZIP code, as well as locate the book in both online and brick-and-mortarbookstores. This way, I do not have to search CUNY+, Brooklyn Public Library, New York Public Library, Queens Library, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc, all separately. Google Books essential gives me what CUNY+ does, but with more added.

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