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A New Feature for Google Book Search

By RR | September 7, 2007

Google Book Search project continues to move forward by offering a pretty cool tool, making it easy to cut and paste excerpts from public domain texts. (thanks to TechCrunch for the scoop). So, I can search the “Odyssey,” find a passage I like, and easily embed it in my blog:

This gets really interesting if I look for another translation (the first is by William Cullen Bryant) and include it here for the sake of comparison. This one is by a slightly more obscure translator, the Earl of Carnarvon, in 1886.

I could go on: there are literally dozens of Odyssey translations in the public domain, all of which are available for reading and download from Google Book Search. In the case of works with multiple translations, the snippet tool allows for easy comparison/contrast of translations, broadening the range of works that students (and scholars) can read and analyze. Maybe we can get Google to scan all of the books GVSU’s library . . .

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