Help:Google Books

Google Books

Google Books is a web service which provides access to text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition. Either "full view" or "snippet view" is available, with some public domain texts free for download.

Before

1. Wikisource prefers DjVu files with text layer for proofreading. Please try Internet Archive first to locate an already existing DjVu file for adding to Wikisource. This help page focuses on PDF files, the format used in Google Books.

Locating files

1. Go to Google Books
2. Search for the book you want. You can also try by the author name.
3. Click on the title. If the text is not available for download; click on "More editions" to locate the copy with download option available.
4. If there are multiple editions with download option, any one of the scans will do.

Deletion of the first page

1. You should delete the first page (the one with the Google logo) from the downloaded file since it is created by Google and does not contain explicit status of its own copyright. Such files might otherwise be challenged by other users.

Conversion to DjVu

1. After locating the file, consider removing the Google page advertisements and watermarks and then upload the file to Internet Archive for DjVu conversion and adding text layer for ease of proofreading. You can ask for help at Help:Internet Archive/Requested uploads.

Tools

• Wikipedia citation tool for Google Books: Converts a Google Books URL into {{cite book}}.