Rare Book Monthly
It's Time to Take a Look at Google Book Search
"Snippets" tell you so little they are of very limited use.
So why then do we like Google Book Search despite the extreme frustration it creates? The answer is in the "full view" books. You can search through every word of these pre-1923 books in an instant, something never before possible, not even if you visited every library on earth. For example, we looked up Henry Clay Barnabee, a virtually forgotten, but once popular actor. His career ran from the second half of the 19th century to the early 20th. It ended in 1917 at the dawn of the age of film. In other words, his performances went unrecorded. There is little left with which to remember him. Little, but here is something. Google Book Search finds us Famous Stars of Light Opera, a 1900 obscurity by Lewis C. Strang. The Stanford University Libraries stamp tells us where Google found this book.
We find that Barnabee got his start imitating fellow salesmen when he worked in a store, making his first public appearance in 1856. He started as a serious actor, but was thrown into the role of impersonating a "Yankee character" when another actor took ill. He proved to be a natural comedian. Strang comments that Barnabee is not a "versatile comedian," "not an originator," and his humor is "often crude and primitive." Evidently what appeals to the public today appealed even then. By the time of this book, the actor-comedian-singer Barnabee's voice "was not now what it was once," but he still was immensely popular. The book goes on to tell us much more, and descriptions of the actor we found in other books indicate that some people may have appreciated Barnabee a bit more than did Strang.
Now the point of this diversion is not to teach about Henry Clay Barnabee, but to illustrate the wealth of material now readily available for research that you almost certainly would not have found 18 months ago. There is other information about Barnabee to be found in an internet search, including the fact that his papers are stored in the collections of his hometown Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Library, if you want to really dig into his career. What Google Book Search provides is additional material you will not find in an internet search, and probably not even in the Portsmouth Library.
Still, this is just the beginning. Google must have many books now available for searching, but it is a small percentage, even of pre-1923 books. In fact, Barnabee wrote an autobiography, Reminiscences of Henry Clay Barnabee. Being an Attempt to Account for His Life, with Some Excuses for His Professional Career. Published in 1913, this book is clearly outside of copyright protection. However, Google has not yet scanned the first edition. What they have, evidently with permission, are 1971 and 2005 reprints. Since these were added with permission, only the annoying "limited preview" is allowed. You are permitted to see some pages, but many are left out. Someday, Google will undoubtedly get around to scanning the first edition, and then we will be able to read Barnabee's complete biography. For now, we can only skip through his life.
