Any experts at using Google Book Search?

[KiteRunner]

This is getting me so frustrated! I did a search for "Brown Walter Horner" and it has come up with 3 matches. One is record of failures and liquidations, which I already knew about from other publications. The other two are entries in the Royal Blue Book, one from 1903 and the other from 1902 (for some reason it says 1822 in the results!)

The 1902 ("1822") one when I click to look at it doesn't seem to show an image at all, so I've been concentrating on the 1903 one. The list of results shows the following for page 675:
"Horn lane, Acton W Brown Walter George, 55a, Gloucester place W Brown Walter Horner, 88 Adelaide road NW Л 54 & 56 Leaden- hall street E С—Clyde villa, ..."

I want to see the end of the entry, so I click on the title of the book, and it comes back saying there are 2 page matches. The first one (p 137) is for Adelaide Road, and it only shows the very top of the page with the highlighted bit cut off; the second one, which is the one I really want to look at - p 675 - shows about 6 lines but Walter Horner's entry starts on the bottom line and there is only the beginning of it. I've been messing about trying to change my search item in "Search in this book" to make it go down a couple of lines and include the whole entry in the image, but whatever I try it either says it can't find it or it finds it but shows a different bit of that page! Does anybody know how to do it before I scream? Or is there no way?

[Macbev]

I'll go and look Kate, but I suspect you've included snipped views in your search as well as complete books. There should be a way to find out what libraries hold copies.

BRB

sorry...that shoulfd be 'full view' as opposed to 'limited preview'

[bev&kev]

The frustration on getting those couple of lines and nothing else .....!
I know it well!

I have also tried doing a search on other relevant words in those very limited previews in the hope of adding a few more lines, but it doesn't seem to work. The only answer is to look at which libraries hold the books. Most libraries are quite happy to lend books to other libraries, but it does depend on the library and how valuable the book in question is.

[Macbev]

A preliminary check indicates this work is available in the libraries of PRO Surrey and University of Oxford. When I was looking for an article that was held in Melbourne State Library, I emailed them and the librarian was kind enough to photcopy the relevant section and mail it to me, free of charge.

You get an explanation about snipping and copyright issues if you click on the link that says "where's the rest of this book".

[KiteRunner]

Yes, Bev, I have included all the books, not just the ones with full views, but what I don't understand is that depending what I search for, it will show me other bits of that page - for instance, if I search for "Brown Walter Langdon" it will show me the 6 lines following Walter Horner Brown's entry, and a search for "Clyde Villa" doesn't do any good either - wait, that gives me an idea!

Yes, it worked! I went back to the Google Books search and used "Clyde Villa" as my search item and in among all the results it has the Royal Blue Book .".. Gloucester place W Brown Walter Horner, 88 Adelaide road NW Л 54 & 56 Leaden- hall street E С—Clyde villa, Sandown, Isle of Wight Brown Walter Langdon. ..."

Phew! I just wanted to know if it would list any more addresses for him than the ones I knew about, but in the end it didn't. Thanks for trying anyway.

[KiteRunner]

Ooh, looking for Clyde Villa has found me another entry about my ancestor - in "The Charitable Ten Thousand" list of people who gave to charity in 1896.

[Phoenix]

Sometimes, if I guess what is likely to come next, I can get not necessarily the next line, but another five lines down. I agree that it is desparately frustrating, since we rarely want more than a few lines of text.

[Mary from Italy]

See if you can find someone in the USA to repeat the search. For some reason, when I got snippet views for one of my people, GeorgiaPeach in the US got full views. Presumably it was a copyright problem, but the book was quite old (1930s).

[KiteRunner]

Thanks for that tip, Mary; I'll bear it in mind in future but as you can see above, I managed to get the Google transcription of the whole of the bit I was interested in - eventually!