This free video on Google Books image search is another installment in Lisa’s tech tips for genealogy and family history. Find images fast by using the thumbnail icon in Google Books. It’s like speed reading for the genealogist!
I am a big fan of all things Google. I marvel at Google Drive, Google Books, Google Images, and even Gmail! Now, I am learning even more from Lisa’s short videos sharing tech tips for Google. This week, she posted “Google Books Image Search for Genealogy and Family History Research,” and it doesn’t disappoint!
A Reminder of the Power of Google E-Books
You may remember another one of Lisa’s free videos titled “Google E-Books for Genealogy and Family History.” In it, we learned about all the wonderful FREE books available as digital e-books online. Many of our readers are finding fun tidbits about the lives of their ancestors in the books found using these tips. So now, Lisa is sharing another trick for working within the Google e-books feature.
Finding Images Fast with Google
Several years ago, I learned that a book titled “Past and Present of Bureau County Illinois” written in 1906 had lots of information and possibly pictures of my husband’s ancestors. I quickly located the e-book online. I entered in each surname in the search field to find out which relatives pictures might be included. It took awhile.
Instead, I should have used the thumbnail icon to search all the pages at once! The thumbnail icon looks like a grid at the top of your e-book image. By clicking it, you can see a grid view of every page of the book.
Look how easy it is to see which pages have an image. You can quickly determine if the image is of a building, person, or even a map. Scroll through a book of over 500 pages in no time!
George B. Harrington, “Past and Present of Bureau County, Illinois,” 1906, Google Books, page 733.
Happily, I found just what I was looking for. There was a picture of my husband’s 2nd great-grandfather, James Coddington. What a great find!
With 25 million books online, we all have a lot of searching to do! Why not share this great tip with your genealogy friends? Let them know about the Genealogy Gems YouTube channel, too so they can view all the helpful tech tips for their family history research. And be sure to click the SUBSCRIBE button so you’ll get all the great search tip videos.
Thanks for reading, friends.
More Gems on Google for Genealogy Research
Google Drive: A Challenger to Dropbox and Evernote
Ancestral Landmark Discover Using Google Earth for Family History
