Old books downloadable from Google

Three weeks ago I wrote about using Google Book Search for genealogy. Starting today, you can download whole books from Google to print or browse offline. This new feature is (not surprisingly) only available for books that are out of copyright. Do a search at Google Book Search with "Full view books" selected under the search box. Click on a result that interests you. A "Download" button will appear on the right, under the title and the author's name and a thumbnail image of the title page. The downloadable files are in PDF format. They are page images only, with no searchable text, so for searching you'll want to keep using the online version. The files are often very large, so be prepared for a long wait if you have a slow internet connection. Three examples:

• The 1628-1853 burial register of the Temple church (in London) is 4.5 MB.
• The 1842 Annual Register is 44.9 MB.
• The 1457-1483 register of wills in the Diocese of Dublin is 6.2 MB.