Google Books has become my constant companion during my dissertation research. You can see it up on my extra monitor below (I’ve been studying this past week at a basement hideout in a secret, no cellphones location far from South Carolina!).
I’m reading again through a very helpful book, Faithful Feelings by Matthew Elliott (it was his dissertation at Aberdeen), and I frequently check Google Books to see if I can read more of the pages he cites. For example, he cites Davies and Allison’s ICC volume on Matthew on the page open before me. So I looked it up. Sure enough, I found the citation and a few more tidbits besides. I happen to be studying “love” more or less at the moment, so a quick search of the whole volume showed me where I might get some of those tidbits.
Google Books has enriched my footnotes—and, more importantly, my knowledge—immeasurably by making available to me immediately (so I don’t lose my train of thought) books that, at best, could reach me in a few days otherwise. As that last sentence may reveal, my train of thought likes to jump to parallel tracks and then back, so this is a great boon!
I couldn’t help noticing something funny, however, in the “key words and phrases” Google automatically generated for the following book. Seems like the guy must qualify himself a lot!
