Eclectic Echoes

Now this is extremely useful — and cool — web tech!

Google continues to index not only the web, but also the libraries of the world. Now — looking for more information on the philopatric behavior of different animals and the genetic, social and other behavioral implications — I can search at Google Print for philopatry. Not only will I get the expected — from Google at least — book title and snippet of relevant text, but also an image of the cover, the author (or editors), genre, publication year, number of pages, page number that the snippet is from and a link to see all the hits from that book.

Even better by clicking on a result image or link you can see the full page that the result is taken from along with links to preceding and following pages, the table of contents & index (where applicable) and links to online stores to purchase the book. Another great feature is that from this result detail page you can also launch a search solely within that particular book.

This is going to be so useful, and fun! I just read enough of the book about desert pumas to know that I will be adding this book about my favorite large cat to my wish list. Of course the same search on philopatry has me wanting to fully check out a the recently published Cambridge University Press book on macaque societies as well. Unfortunately that one is a bit pricey, hopefully I might be able to find it at one of the local libraries.

Hmmm…I wonder how long it will take for someone to link the result page to their local library with greasemonkey…