I was very excited several months ago when I came across “Google Books” - especially since there are many books that you can see the Full Preview. If there are any other search engine sites that have this feature – please alert me so I can check them out as well.
If you type “genealogy” into the search box at Google Books, there are 49,700 hits – some are full books, others are Limited or Snippet previews. For myself (as an example), I want to see full books so in the box next to the word “showing” – I want to use the scroll down menu to show “Full View Only”. Then the hits are 12,300. Still too many to look at. I’m interested in Indiana Genealogy so I qualify by search terms to “Indiana genealogy”. That only shows 1 item – not anything I am interested in. Let’s take the quotes out and see what happens. Without the quotes it returned 1032 hits.
Try it with surnames that you are researching. When I research my HOUSE ancestors, I actually have to add a first name or I’ll get a lot of hits having to do with actually houses. Let’s try “Lazarus House” (my 3rd great-grandfather). I receive 53 hits with that search term. Some of them are talking about “the” Lazarus House which seems to be a hospital or clinic. Others are talking about the Biblical Lazarus’ home. These hits: ”New England Historical and Genealogical Register”, “Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society”, “Genealogy of the Loveland Family”, “Glastenbury for Two Hundred Years” - all mention my ancestor.
I’ve also tried it with “Madison County History” Indiana, “Brown County” Ohio, and others. It’s another good research tool to be used.
