Are you thinking about applying to a PhD program? Are you already a doctoral student? PhD is a huge investment of time and money. So make sure you spend 15 minutes of your time reading this blog devoted to PhD program success and survival tips. I'm confident that these tips can save up to 10 years of your life, up to $1,000,000 of your money, and, most importantly, your physical and emotional health.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Using GoogleBooks to Access and Search Free Books

Let's face it - going to the library sucks. First, you have to PHYSICALLY go there. May not be a good idea if it's snowing outside or you just don't feel like going anywhere on that particular day. Second, you have to carry you laptop and a bunch of other crap to the library if you are to work there productively. And if your leave your work place to take a piss or have a smoke, someone might just steal your stuff. Third, undergraduates often hangout in libraries, creating so much noise you cannot concentrate on anything. But the most important reason against going to the library is that you will have to sit around the library types. Usually, a few hours in this environment is enough to put into the state of depression even the most cheerful and optimistic person.

So if you don't like going to the library, you can use GoogleBooks to search and access a bunch of books online. Of course, it may not have all the latest stuff, but who needs new stuff for the dissertation? You probably need old and boring books for that. For example, I found a lot of good statistics books in full text. Many books are not available in full, but usually all you need is to read a few pages from a book. The most important feature of this service is that you can search book text, so it will save you a lot of time. GoogleBooks is an excellent tool to pimp up your dissertation with book citations.

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