How Google Books is Changing Academic History
I was idly trying a search on "roads" to see what sort of a literature would turn up for the period of my dissertation research, 1740-1850. I didn't expect much. I've spent the last two years wandering through the Yale, Harvard, and California libraries, the British Library, Britain's National Archives, and the immense reserves of North American Inter Library Loan reading every book on London, pavement, or travel I could get my hands on. Surprise. In a single idle search I just added twenty extra full-text books to my list.
Jo Guldi is a PhD student and political activist.