The GoogleBooks Research Project (1)
I've groused enough about GoogleBooks and its quality control, or lack thereof. Let's try something different.
Next week, I'm giving a paper on Grace Kennedy's Father Clement (1823) and the transformation of transatlantic anti-Catholic fiction in the 19th c. In turn, I plan to spend at least part of the summer transforming this conference paper into an article. For someone like myself, located at a small college and near a research library of only moderate size, this project has some obvious built-in pitfalls:
- My library doesn't own any of the relevant books;
- It owns runs of just a few of the relevant periodicals;
- It doesn't subscribe to any of the full-text literary databases.
With patience and/or $, some of these problems can be solved: I can buy books, ILL them (depending on rarity), hope that the British Library is willing to microfilm them, or just fly in their general direction. However, all of those solutions presume that I already know what the relevant books are. And, once one gets beyond the secondary sources, such knowledge itself requires Searching Inside the Book--the old-fashioned way. Difficult when you and the books in question are on opposite sides of the country and/or Atlantic, no?
What I'd like to do, then, is see how far GoogleBooks helps with this particular project, and then, at the end--however many months down the road--think about the pros and cons of GoogleBooks as a research tool, especially for academics in similar situations.
Phase I:
Origins of this particular project: A random GoogleBooks search for "Father Clement." (Score one for GoogleBooks!)
Novels: GoogleBooks has, so far, been least useful here. I've identified & read four Catholic novels directly responding to the novel, two of them already well-known (er, to those of us who work on anti-Catholic fiction) and two not; all of that legwork was done by, well, sitting down at a desk. Of those four books, only one is available full-text on GoogleBooks; one is available in snippet view and the other two are only listed by name (and could not have been identified as responses to Father Clement using only a GoogleBooks search). Two of those novels are in my personal collection. Further searching on GoogleBooks has turned up only two more novels not in my personal collection (or prior reading acquaintance) of immediate use, although more of them may prove helpful as time goes on; both of those novels were missing multiple pages. I managed to find another (complete!) online copy of one, but I'll have to track down the library that owns the other.
Note: I would not be surprised if many special collections were never digitized out of (understandable and probably correct) anxiety about damage to the books.
Periodicals: Much better track record so far. I've bookmarked several relevant reviews and articles published on both sides of the Atlantic. Very useful for articles not indexed by Wellesley. However, I must prevent myself from falling into the easy and convenient assumption that this is the best list I could come up with. Most periodicals have been digitized in only sporadic clumps--goodness knows what's missing--and I can't help noticing that the Athenaeum is not yet available. A number of major Victorian periodicals, surprisingly enough, are only available in snippet view.
Nonfiction books: Spotty again. I've identified some useful biographies that will have to be ILLd, as they are only available in snippet view. One book that I really need to read only exists in the British Library; as it's really a pamphlet, I may be able to get them to microfilm it for me.
Onward!