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The website says the books, important to scholars of China studies, "are ones in which Western foreigners wrote and described what they saw and encountered in China from about the 16th century until 1911, in which year the revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen successfully overthrew the Manchu Dynasty, and thus began the modern China era". Publication date may be later. | The website says the books, important to scholars of China studies, "are ones in which Western foreigners wrote and described what they saw and encountered in China from about the 16th century until 1911, in which year the revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen successfully overthrew the Manchu Dynasty, and thus began the modern China era". Publication date may be later. | ||
==Family History Books== | |||
* [http://books.familysearch.org/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=FHD_PUBLIC Website] | |||
Hosted by FamilySearch this is a searchable site containing over 40,000 family history related books from seven major US Libraries. This is an ongoing project. | |||
[[Category:Online books| ]] | [[Category:Online books| ]] | ||
[[Category:Research methods]] | [[Category:Research methods]] | ||
Revision as of 08:51, 5 March 2012
Various websites provide access to digitised copies of books. Online books can contain a wealth of useful material with the added bonus of the ability to search the text. You will find many links to online books across the FIBIwiki.
Please note that links to historical books are provided as an information and research tool and FIBIS cannot verify the accuracy of such works nor guarantee they are free from bias. Readers are advised to note the date of any historical books and assess the material accordingly.
See also:
Google Books
Google Books is an online repository of digitised books scanned from libraries around the world. Books that are labelled 'Full View' can be read in their entirety and pdf copies can be saved to your computer.
There are thousands of books that have content relevant for family history research including directories, civil lists, biographies and military histories. As well as reading around a topic or finding out about a place, it is worth searching on an ancestor's name in inverted commas e.g. "John Doe". You may have to try various combinations of the name. This is particularly successful for ancestors of a certain social class living in the first half of the nineteenth century, but you never know what you may find. Try tracing an officer's career via listings of promotions, look for births/marriages/deaths or find the postings of an apothecary. Using the Advanced Search to narrow down the time frame of publication can be useful.
FIBIS resources
- "Using Google Books for Family History Research" by Ed Storey FIBIS Journal Number 25 (Spring 2011), pages 44-48
FIBIS on Google Books
FIBIS has a Google Books library with books on topics related to its aims. You can search within the books in the library, a useful technique for eliminating results unrelated to historical British India topics. The library is currently still growing.
- View the FIBIS Google Books Library
Copying Information from Full View Google Books
The following is not available if the book is labelled 'Limited View' or 'Snippet View' or 'No Preview'.
When you are reading a Full View book you can click:
- ”Plain Text” to copy the text to a Word or similar document. What you copy will not be fully accurate, so you will need to check your copy against the original wording.
- ”Clip” as a first step to copying a part of the actual page. A small blue rectangle should appear around the word clip. Next left click and draw a rectangle around the paragraph you require. Click within the paragraph which should then become blue. Then copy the link which appears under “Image” and paste in a document. You can subsequently use this link to view the paragraph you have saved. You can also use programs such as Powerpoint to make a slide of the paragraph you have clipped.
Expanding a Google Books Snippet view search result
A researcher was seeking further information on Colonel Warren Francis Trotter, born in India The first Google Books search result stated The Near East, Volume 11 1916 Snippet view "Colonel Warren Francis Trotter, Royal Marine Artillery, died at Briery Close. Windermere, on Monday. ... district preferred, and rough idea of fees should be given".
The link inside the book was not helpful, and the wording from the search result could not be seen on the snippet view of the page inside the book.
One method is to focus on less common words at the end of the search result wording and carry out a new search for these words. The next Google Books search was Artillery, “Briery Close” which resulted in the wording “Colonel Warren Francis Trotter, Royal Marine Artillery, died at Briery Close. Windermere, on Monday. He joined the RMA in 1876, and had seen service in China, Esquimault, and Egypt. He was awarded the Egyptian Medal. ...”. The next Google Books search result for "China, Esquimault, and Egypt" resulted in the wording “He joined the RMA in 1876, and had seen service in China, Esquimault, and Egypt. He was awarded the Egyptian Medal. 1882, and the Khedive's Bronze Star. At the time of his death he was in command of a howitzer and antiaircraft brigade. ...”. A final search using the words "Khedive's Bronze Star" howitzer resulted in the wording” 1882, and the Khedive's Bronze Star. At the time of his death he was in command of a howitzer and antiaircraft brigade. Captain Henry Needham Knox, RN, who took part in the Crimean War, died in Bournemouth ...”
The final wording appears to be Colonel Warren Francis Trotter, Royal Marine Artillery, died at Briery Close. Windermere, on Monday. He joined the RMA in 1876, and had seen service in China, Esquimault, and Egypt. He was awarded the Egyptian Medal 1882, and the Khedive's Bronze Star. At the time of his death he was in command of a howitzer and antiaircraft brigade
Archive.org
To access a small number of books you will need to have Java and a DjVu plug-in installed on your computer. Mac users having problems with DjVu should read DjVu Browser Plug-in Does Not Work in Safari on Mac OS X 10.6. For more information, FAQs: Enhanced (DjVu) viewer from Findmypast.co.uk
Project Gutenberg
Over 30,000 free electronic books to download. The books available are out of copyright, so there are many dating from the 19th century. They are available in Plain text (.txt) format, having been OCR scanned and carefully checked by volunteers.
Digital Library of India
Digital Library of India has many interesting books whose titles you can see if you search using words such as Bengal, Calcutta , Madras and Bombay. However to actually view these books you will need to download a plug-in to read the TIFF format (Alternatiff for Windows users and Plugger for Linux users) whose details you will also find within the website. Books available include volumes of the Calcutta Review published later than those available on Google Books, books in the Indian Records Series, Yearbooks etc
This site is not very user friendly and is sometimes unavailable. The quality of the scanned print varies from excellent to poor. Individual books do not have their own URL and it will be necessary to search for the book you require. The great advantage of the site however, is that you can find books which are not available elsewhere.
Book Reader 1 seems to be the preferable option. Some researchers cannot access Reader 2. Make sure you can see the bottom of the screen which has the arrows and the page numbers. You will need to see these to be able to turn the pages. If you can’t see these, there are two scrolling devices on the side of the screen, and you will need to scroll the bottom one until you can see the arrows etc. Individual books do not have a search facility. If however you have a page reference (from the index, or elsewhere), you can first click over the existing page number to delete it, type the page number you require, then press ‘enter’ on your computer keyboard. This may not bring you to exactly the page you require, but by looking at the actual page number of the page displayed, (as opposed to the computer page number) you should be able to find the page you require. The first few pages of the book may be blank, you just need to keep going further into the book before you can read a page.
This India List post advises that for Reader 1, “I scrolled through on the text option so that download time was faster, and then I switched to the tiff images if I wanted to see the full image”. However, it seems as though your options very much depend on your particular computer, as the writer of this section is not able to access Reader 2, and within Reader 1, the only reading option which works is the TIFF option.
Mac users can read about suitable plug-ins in this link from the US Patents Office and this link from MacOSXhints.com.
TIFF tips Library of Virginia has general information about viewing TIFF images
DSpace at West Bengal State Central Library
DSpace at West Bengal State Central Library is the Digital repository of the ‘West Bengal Public Library Network’ which is a joint effort of public Libraries of West Bengal. The texts are available as searchable pdfs to download.
The most useful volumes appear to be those under the heading Gazetteers and Gazeeters. Browse ‘Subjects’and select ‘Gazetteers”, or the direct link is Gazetteers. In addition to various Gazetteers, there are editions of the Calcutta Gazette, 1846 and 1872- 1942 (broken range) and the Gazette of India 1877-1918 (broken series). Under Gazeeteers, there is Bengal District Gazetteers: 24-Parganas 1914 by L.S.S. O'Malley
Osmania University Digital Library [OUDL]
Osmania University is situated in Hyderabad. The library has a connection with the Digital Library of India, however this site seems to contain at least some books which do not appear on the DLI website, eg Fatehgarh And The Mutiny by C L Wallace 1933
The texts are available as pdfs to download.
Rare Books On Sindh
This link is part of the website Panhwar.com about Sindh Many books on Bombay and Sindh. Must be downloaded to view.
Gallica
Gallica is the digital library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. A researcher has advised:
There are a surprisingly large number of English books, especially scientific journals, and travelogues. Somebody in France was systematically collecting these throughout the early and mid 19th century. There was an earlier version of the "Great Game" going on between Britain and France. My 4 x great uncle John Croft Hawkins, a Bombay Marine officer, took the first steam vessel up the Euphrates to Hit in what is now Iraq. I knew he had done this, because it is mentioned in his obituaries, but do you think I could find an account of it in the British papers? No, either it was so "secret" that the papers were hidden away and lost, or the ants had got it. Yet I have found a nearly contemporary French account of his progess! I have found books in Galica that are not available in Google Books, and some that are only Snippet View in Google Books are available in Full View.
National Library of Singapore: Singapore Digitised Books
Books available to download include:
- Directories for Singapore for the years 1853-1957, 1859-1861, 1867-1870, 1875, 1877,1879, 1881. There is also an 1821 Directory for Prince of Wales Island (Penang)
- The stranger's guide to Singapore with maps 1890
Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection
Digitized Afghanistan Materials in English from the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Cornell University Library: South East Asia Visions
The website says: South East Asia Visions is a collection of European travel accounts of pre-modern Southeast Asia from Cornell University Library's John M. Echols Collection. The site provides online access to more than 350 books and journal articles written in English and French. The works in the collection were selected for the quality of their first-hand observations and, together, provide a comprehensive representation of Southeast Asia.
University of Hong Kong Libraries: China through Western Eyes
A Digital Initiative from the University of Hong Kong Libraries.
The website says the books, important to scholars of China studies, "are ones in which Western foreigners wrote and described what they saw and encountered in China from about the 16th century until 1911, in which year the revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen successfully overthrew the Manchu Dynasty, and thus began the modern China era". Publication date may be later.
Family History Books
Hosted by FamilySearch this is a searchable site containing over 40,000 family history related books from seven major US Libraries. This is an ongoing project.