Switched from library catalogs to Google Books previews for research

Used to only use my local library's online catalog for finding sources. Would spend hours scrolling through titles and hoping the snippet told me enough. A professor told me last year to check Google Books previews first. Now I can scan the actual table of contents and index before making a trip. It saved me about 2 hours last week on a paper about urban farming in Detroit. Still hit the library for the full copy though. Does anyone else mix digital previews with physical books for their school projects?

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shane_perry291mo ago

I typed "Detroit urban farming" into Google Books last week and got back a preview for a 2019 book that was actually more about community gardening in Chicago. The table of contents looked right but the index was thin. I still had to go to the library and pull a 1970s city planning report that actually had the data I needed. Google Books is good for a first pass but it misses a lot of stuff that never got scanned right. The previews also cut off at page 200 on some books which is annoying when the index is in the back. You really need both.