Search My Google Books Library with Key Words

I've got 4000+ books in my favorites at my Google bookshelf. All are geared toward education and learning, so if you browse with key terms, you'll get a nice long list of books to search. Only a small portion of these books have been listed here on this blog. You'll find one difference, I put all links here on my blog in HTML so that individual pages or illustrations can be printed.

You can do this yourself if you use the link for my Google bookshelf. Just choose the plain text version of the book(right hand corner of any page in the book), then change the link to HTML by deleting "text" and adding "html". Then you can right click on the images of the pages and save them to your computer.

Click here my Google bookshelf .

This link is also on my sidebar.

Virtual Homeschool Library

Many books categorized by subject and historical time periods. Click here. I'll add this to my sidebar.

HT to Sarah

Google Books Limiting Downloads

It seems Google Books is now limiting access to book downloads on some of their free books, some of which are listed here on this blog. If you have trouble finding a download here, let me know, and I will try to find one elsewhere.

Although Google Books has a greater variety of free public domain educational books, Project Gutenberg is much more liberal with their downloads(and less complicated). I may begin posting more books from Project Gutenberg, and steering away from Google Books, when possible.

Free Word Processor: Jarte

We've been using this free download program for years to print copy-and-paste school materials.

"Jarte \jär · 'tay\ noun (est. 2001) 1. A free word processor based on the Microsoft WordPad word processing engine built into Windows. 2. A fast starting, easy to use word processor that expands well beyond the WordPad feature set. 3. A small, portable word processor whose documents are fully compatible with Word and WordPad." See more here.

My New Search Box

I've added a search box on my sidebar. It should be much easier to find items on this blog with key words now. The Google search box was not working well, so I've deleted it.

New Download Page at Google Books

Instead of having the button for the download in the upper right corner on the main page for each book, there is now a link to the Google Ebook reader. To download the books to PDF or view in Plain Text, click to any page within the book. The download button for PDF and the Plain Text view will be in the upper right hand corner on any page view.  Maybe this was just an oversight, and they will add a download button back to the main overview page.

Something New at Google Books - Public Domain Books in Print

You can now request printed copies in paperback of your favorite public domain online books at Google Books. Look for the "QOOP" link on the right panel under the "Get This Book" heading on all "Overview" pages. Prices seem fairly low. This is an opportunity to have access to new paperback versions of books not currently in commercial reprint, or if they are in reprint, at a reduced cost.

Example:
Get this book
AbeBooks
Alibris
QOOP (look for this)
Amazon
Google Product Search

Google Books Blocking Download Helpers

If you are using a download helper for downloading books at Google Books, you may receive a temporary ban(24 hours) from downloading. Spidering is against the terms of service, and download helpers appear to trigger blocking. I'll be taking down the link for the free download helper. It's a shame because this was a very handy way for me to download books a little at a time with my slow connection.

Free E-Book: Embracing the E-Book Revolution

I'm not sure how long this PDF download will be free, but it is helpful for those wanting to learn more about using E-books for homeschooling.

Click here.

HT to Denese.

Changes at Google Books

Today I noticed a whole new screen when I clicked into specific Google Books. There is no longer a button on the sidebar for HTML. I did find it on the bottom of the main page for Google Books. So now if you want to print off a few pages or images, you need to go to the Google Main Menu page and click at the bottom to HTML mode. This is the only way to copy and save images of specific pages to your computer. Entire books can still be downloaded to a PDF, and plain text is still available at the book links.

Or copy and paste: http://books.google.com/books?output=html into your browser.

Clickable link to go directly to Google Books in HTML mode.

Download Help from a Download Manager

I have dial-up which may be the reason that I have trouble downloading book from Google, although I've not had this problem elsewhere. The other day, I stumbled upon a free download manager, and for the first time was able to download books off Google.

If you've had similar problems, you might want to try a download manager. It pauses and saves, which is especially good for dial-up so when you lose your connection you aren't having to begin again. It save the portion you have downloaded before you lost you connection, and resumes after you re-connect.

Google Books Download Helps and Google Library

Google Books has improved their free online book service. You can now switch to plain text to copy and paste, or highlight all(select all) in order to copy and save text to your computer. I'm fairly certain the plain text option was not available during the summer. You can also switch to HTML(bottom right margin) which means you can save the pages and pictures to your computer, copy pages, and see hyper-links on the table of contents.

Once you switch to HTML mode, just right click on the image of the page in order to save or print. Most of the links I post here are already in HTML mode. The default mode at Google Books is standard mode which does not allow right clicks on the images of the page.

Another new option is the Google Library. This is so helpful! I have added over a hundred books from Google Books to my library for later viewing. Click here to take a peak. I'll being reviewing these books, and adding them here if they are helpful to homeschooling.

Copy Work, Decorative List or Assignment Page

I made a lined page with the vintage picture to the left of a girl reading in an apple tree.

Printing tip: In order to get rid of the extra print on the top and on the bottom of the page which shows the document title and web page address, go to print preview and delete the header and footer before printing. Here are the directions for versions of IE and Fire Fox at Google Documents.

Printing and Binding books

Printing can get very expensive, so I bought the Brother HL5150D(duplex printer, prints both sides) which is recommended by Robinson Homeschool . I got a good deal for a refurbished model online from Office Depot two years ago. Robinson Homeschool curriculum is vintage books all on cd's, and they require quite a bit of printing, so I thought they would have good recommendations for low cost copies.

The Brother HL5150D is a laser printer which runs less expensive copies than ink jets. It got excellent reviews across the net, especially at PriceGrabber.com. This site which sells the replacement laser toner cartridges reports that the printing cost per page is .011 cents! A very good price for copies, especially two sided copies which would run you half that amount per page, about .0055 cents per page.

You can always bind the books yourself. Here are some home book binding helps:

Book binding tutorial Skip to step 3 if you are making your own copies. This looks very labor intensive, but you might pick up a few helpful tips even if you don't make a book from scratch.

Homemade leather or book binding glue


Office Depot charges .08 cents a copy, so I won't be asking them to copy a book for me. They will do a nice comb binding for $2.39. You can punch holes in pages and use brads, but a comb binding makes turning pages so much easier. I plan to try this with a few books soon. I'll post when I do.

Another idea would be to punch holes in a book and place it into a ring binder. This would be especially good for books which you plan to just use for school, rather than reading books you plan to keep in your library.

Feel free to add ideas for binding books.

Saving Texts

Project Gutenberg's texts are very easy to save, just download the zip file, or go to the HTML or plain text. Once the text loads, right click, select all and save to your computer. This can take up a lot of space on your computer. As mentioned here, you can save it to a flash drive, or use Google Documents to store it online, and/or convert to another file type.

Google documents allows you to upload the Project Gutenberg text with just the url. Then you can amend it for personal use, like edit out extra print, and save it as a zipped HTML, RTF, pdf, Open Office, Word or plain text. You save the text to these different file type by clicking on "file" in the edit mode of your saved documents at Google Documents.

The only negative aspect of doing this is that the pictures do not load, so you'd have to add them back if you upload non-plain text. In this case, it would be easier to download the zip file text off Project Gutenberg, or just have a large file of the HTML stored.

Another helpful Google Documents function under "file" in edit mode is Word Count. This analyzes the documents word count and readability level. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but it will give the grade level. You can analyze children's vintage texts with Word Count if you are curious about the reading level.

Here is another free place to turn documents into pdf files.

Download, Viewing And Printing Tips

The most efficient way to download entire Project Gutenberg texts with or without illustrations is click on the HTML format on the download page, or plain text format if you don't want images(or if they are not available), and let the entire book load. Don't choose the "zip" option for downloading.

After it loads, right click and "select all". Then click on "save as" and the entire book will download in seconds. On my browser, "save as" is on my drop down menu after clicking "page" on my toolbar.

These tips will work for other resources as well. The only exception is the Google Book Reader which would not allow me to right click. Update: I figured it out - switch to HTML mode and you can save and print pages. Look at the bottom of the sidebar once you begin reading your Google book. There are three modes: standard(default), HTML and plain text. I have not been able to copy the entire books using "select all". Pages at Google can only be saved a page at a time unless you download it.

This is so much faster(if you have a slow connection) than using the zip file option on the download page. If you find that you need more computer storage space, download the file to a handy-dandy portable personal storage space, a USB flash drive AKA: thumbdrive:







These things are wonderful for storage. I keep all my important files and pictures on this 2 GB Sandisk, and it's easy to plug into any computer. This makes it very convenient to use for printing your books at the copy shop. This USB flash drive device can easily store a large library of books, and it becomes a library to go.

Note: The plug retracts for easy portability, and it's got a leash for carrying around the neck. There are other versions which can attach to your key chain.

HT to Christine at As The House Turns, for asking about book downloads.