Mountain View, California — Search engine giant’s one of the most ambitions project is Google Books, which empowers readers and researchers alike to sift through more than seven million books online. Google today introduced seven new features to its digital library — Google Books, in an attempt to make the site easier to navigate and titles easier to share, including improved search capabilities, a flashy new page-turning button, and a thumbnail view that makes quick work of navigating scanned pages.
The Google Books service has been haunted by publishers and other privacy advocacy groups, recently reached an agreement with rights holders that will allow them to expand the service further. Several new additions to Google Books have been announced yesterday that bring new features and functionality to the book searching process.
The latest changes made to the site are outlined here, including some excellent options for users to view pages within books and magazines as thumbnails. Here is a brief summation of all new features that have been introduced:
Embeds and Links: This new toolbar option enables you to embed a preview of a full view or partner book on any of your websites or blogs through a simple html code, in a similar way you share a YouTube video. “Programmers skillful in the use of API tools could accomplish this via our Embedded Viewer API, but this new solution is much easier for everyone to use,” says Google Books Product Manager Brandon Badger. “Users can also choose to grab a URL link to email or IM to friends that takes them to the same book and page on Google Books.”
“I’m excited to announce that we are introducing changes to Google Books that give readers and book lovers everywhere new ways to interact with the words and images contained within the books we have brought online,” wrote Badger.
“We have also made it easier for users to share previews of their favorite books on their blogs or websites.”
Better Search Within Each Book: Searching books has become more powerful for public domain and partner books, users can now search and view exactly where their search term appears within a book, because Google now shows more context around the term, including an image from the part of the page it is on. Users can select the images to navigate directly on the pages inside the book, and sort search results by relevance as well as page order in the book. Also, in the search results bar, there is a “Previous” and “Next” buttons that lets you to browse through search hits quickly and easily.
Thumbnail View: The thumbnail view feature is handy for looking at all of the pages in a public domain book or in a magazine at a glance. Selecting a thumbnail image will open that page directly in the reading view. However, it is available for “full view” books only.
Contents Drop-Down Menu: Above the book itself, there is now a “Contents Drop-Down” meny that takes you quickly to any chapters within the book or articles within a magazine.
Plain Text Mode: As the name suggest, this option makes it easier to find plain text versions of public domain books. If a book is available in full view, you can click the “Plain Text” button in the toolbar to see the HTML version of the text (derived via OCR for full view books). The advantage is that it is useful for visually impaired users who use text-to-speech programs.
Page Turn Button and Animation: In addition to scrolling through the book, selecting the page turn button at the bottom of the screen will turn the page, and an animated line moves with the page turn to make it easier to keep track of your location in the text.
Improved Book Overview Page: Finally, the improved book overview page now includes additional information such as reviews ratings, summaries, related books, key words and phrases, references from the web, places mentioned in the book, publisher information, and more.
The new features are the latest in what has been a tumultuous stretch for the Google Books project. Some features that is introduced here sounds quite interesting while others will probably not find such a huge following. It is however good to see that Google is improving their service further.
With the project seems to be materializing, the company inked a deal with Sony to provide titles for the Reader digital book device.