The World A.T. Ways

Posted By Kevin Gaugler on January 23, 2009

What I love about the new web is that I am constantly rediscovering Google tools that I knew were there all along. The other day I was digging around through Google’s Book Search feature, particularly the Advanced Book Search feature, in pursuit of Spanish grammar books that had fallen into the public domain due to their age.

Here’s one great way to use these terrific resources:

Using the Advanced Book Search feature, simply pick your target language, select the “full view only” option and enter the language you are looking for in the search box. (e.g., “Italian” or “italiano”). Instantly you will be presented with choices which include vintage grammar books from the turn of the century. Now, open a book, choose the crop button, and select the part of the text you want. The dialog box that appears presents you with the option to embed the snippet into your own site. Imagine being able to customize your curriculum simply by tearing out pieces of a grammar book, for example, to present to your students when and where you want such content to appear. You’ve just become your own personal publishing house, easily and legally.

The search I just mentioned yielded an Italian language reader of 19th century literature from 1914:

An Italian reader of nineteenth century literature By Thomas D. Bergen, George Benson Weston

During my journey with Google Book Search, I uncovered many language grammar books that constitute beautiful time capsules of the American university system. The illustration below from a 1920 Spanish conversation book represents a small fraction of the public domain treasures available. Think about the ways you could use this picture in language courses to generate target language conversation about past and present daily life. You could then reuse the same content in your methods course to compare and contrast current and past pedagogical practices.

Español en español By Rafael Diez de la Cortina

What is more, if you have a Gmail account, you can save the books to your Google “library” for safe keeping. Let us know how you have rediscovered a Google feature by posting it in the comment box of this entry. You’ll need to click on the title of the post so that the comment window is visible and you can now sign in with your Disqus or Facebook account.

In which I rediscover google-ol’-fashioned grammar books by Kevin Gaugler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.worldatways.com/suggest-topics/.

Categories: Mass-Customization, social networks
Tags: books, Google, grammar, Kevin, search