Googlebooks has saved my life! I normally disparage research using google - but this resource is far from 'wiki'. I have been looking for some Regency material for ages (early 19th c) and have found it online on googlebooks. With a majority of books, magazines etc fully searchable and you can download it as a Pdf. Some annoyingly aren't. Boooo!

But yes, at best if I had heard of these texts I would have to find a special collections library to view them - at worst. I would have never heard of them! And at 1am today when I was searching golddust, pure golddust (writhes in glee!) - I thought, thank you google....thank you ;-)

I love Google books too! Found a book on there once and thought it would just be table of contents etc... But the entire book was available there! How do they do it??? Google Scholar is good too... I hate when people knock the internet resources they are fab!!!

Agreed that Google Books and Google Scholar are great resources. I have used Google Scholar to try to get a preview on a book and decide whether it was worth purchasing or finding at a library. And Google Scholar is great--it is a great way to get a lead on articles or books. Sometimes you just need that one article that can lead to others and you are off and running. And Google itself is good sometimes for just a lead on information! I think Google is an underestimated tool for research!

Google scholar is fantastic

I totally agree. Googlebooks has made me discover amazingly good materials (but not downloadable unfortunately).