Thanks so much to Dick Hillenbrand for mentioning that Google had old books that could be downloaded. I am collecting information for one or more books I'd like to write about New Yorkers by the name of Gardenier (includes Gordineer and other spellings). Downloading whole books will not benefit me as it might some others, but I visited the Google Books site to see if surname research could be done on it. It can. This email will tell you how to do it. http://books.google.com/ On the opening page, you can choose All Books (default), or Full View Books. Full View Books are not copyrighted any longer, so you are allowed more viewing opportunities. This email discusses Full View only. Click on Advanced Book Search if you wish. It will let you control your search better. However, you must choose Full View Books on this page if that is what you want. If you chose it on the opening page, it is not remembered when you go to this page. For my research, I enter a single spelling of a surname, although you can search for more than one word at a time. A list of books will appear. Usually, only a single hit is listed per book, even if the name appears on many pages. Clicking on a hit takes you to the page in the book on which the name appears. A few days ago when I did my first search, the names were highlighted in yellow so that I could find them easily. Today, they are not highlighted, not even the same hits that were highlighted recently. Nevertheless, it is a great benefit just to be taken to the correct page. OPTIONS You can zoom in, zoom out, view either one or two pages at a time, or view the page at full screen (it shows about seven more lines at the bottom of the screen). There is a frame to the right which contains links to many things. You will find a search box. You *must* type the name in that box if you want to see all of the other occurences of the name in the book. UNDERSTANDING THESE HITS In my searches within a book, there seemed to be a sort of Soundex search happening. A search for Gardinier might produce six hit. Part of some text is shown for each to give you some idea what the hit is about. Two might actually show the name Gardinier. In my case, the others showed no surname in the hit text. When I went to the page, the name on the page was Gardiner, a different surname (although some Gardiniers were recorded with that name). In my case, I search for people who are not related to me, so I don't know enough about them usually to be sure that a Gardiner mentioned is really a Gardinier. I now ignore the hits that don't show the spelling I want. That might be dangerous for you to do until you are sure of what is happening in your own situation. BOOK TITLE If you find an interesting record, you will want to record the source. However, the books seem to sometimes be titled for a series of which they are a part. I have found that the actual title may not even be similar to the one displayed. On the right, if you use the Title link, you will find the real title and the year of publication. In the cases where there is no link to the title page, go to page 1. If that is not it, you will have to use the back arrow (to the left of the page number box) to get to the title page. MISSING PAGES I have done only a little research, but have found pages missing. A record that interests me might begin or end on another page which is not there. In one case, some of the pages were out of order. To find them, I could enter the missing page number and search for it. In other cases, during the search the page number would revert back to a different page number, which means that the desired page can't be found. Google Books shows book images. But, they are searchable. That must mean that they have been converted to text unless there is a new technology about which I haven't heard. I haven't yet found a way to copy and paste the text, so I use an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program if the text I want to copy is long. Otherwise, I type it. Google Books is a great new resource for genealogists. Cliff Lamere