Monday, February 19, 2007

love, Love, LOVE the Internet!

Like Former Native Speaker, some days I'm just in awe of what I can do here, in the comfort* of my apartment. I just used Google Book Search to locate a digitized copy of an 1869 book by Olive Logan, which I needed in order to verify a couple of quotations in my diss. And you can search within a book. So, say, if you need to locate a remark that includes the words "indecent army" or "one disgraceful spectacle of padded legs jiggling and wriggling in the insensate follies and indecencies of the hour" you can find 'em!

Way cool. And yes, I really got to write about trashy women.

*Okay, so "comfort" is a relative term, as the current room temperature is 66.4 degrees F with the baseboards cranked beyond any ability to pay my next electric bill.

2 comments:

middlebrow said...

The ability to search text is great. My last chapter is on statistics and fiction and I was able to download all of the Presidential state of the union speeches and do a word search for statistics. Do you know which President mentions statistics more often than any other President? I do. It's Teddy Roosevelt.

susansinclair said...

Oh, I'm filing that tidbit away!