Using Google Book Clip to Add Content and Images To Your Blog or Website
You can quote the source, directly showing an scanned image from the original document or book. You can quote works whether they be textual, illustrations, photographs, maps, charts, sheet music, or tables. You can display public domain artwork as decorative elements on your page. The possibilities are endless.
There are literally millions of books sitting in libraries around the world rarely touched. They hold within them amazing stories, extraordinary artwork, fascinating information, and useful raw data. Because the content of these books has been hard to search, and often inaccessible to people far away, this information could have been lost to history, but now with Google Books, these books live on.
Learn how you can now share these books with the Google Clip tool.
The Benefits of Using Google Book Clip
(These owls are displayed using the Google Book Clip tool)
- Content - Clips from Google Books can provide useful and rich content to add to your web pages. The ability to add illustrations, photos, quotes, charts, sheet music, or maps and to your page can increase its usefulness to the reader.
- Clickouts - Google Book Clips link back to their original source. Being hyperlinks, this gives your visitors a connection to more information, and it gives you a chance to get clickouts from your page.
- Traffic - Making your Google Book Clips SEO friendly by adding the ALT tag, you can get traffic from image searches relative to your topic.
- Legal Images - Having free and legal illustrations to improve the aesthetic of your page is important. Very specific topics can be difficult to locate pictures for, but with access to Google Books in the public domain, there are millions of images available for use.
- Quotes and References - Give your writing credibility by adding quotes and references, whether textual or illustrative, to your page.
Have You Used Google Book Clips?
How to Use the Clipper Tool
While looking at any book in the public domain, at the top right of the page you will see a button that says "Clip".
Click on "Clip" one time and then draw a box around the area you would like to turn into an image and share on your website. Do this by clicking in one corner, holding it in and dragging to the opposite corner. As you draw your box will highlight in light blue.
When you have finished your selection, a box will automatically appear displaying three fields. The first is used to translate text (we don't need to use this one). The second holds the URL for the clipped image, and the third has the HTML code you will need to add to your page with a link back to this page. Copy and paste this "embed" code to your site.
It is as simple as that.
Choose the Code to Embed Image
Imagine the Possibilities
Will Google's Book Scan Project Transform Academia?
Making Your Google Book Clip SEO Friendly
The Beautiful ALT tag
Again using the snowy owl example from the top of this page, here I've added the ALT tag "The Snowy Owl (from The Birds of America by John James Audubon)". This will help my page get better placing in an image search for "birds of america", "audubon birds", "audubon snowy owl", etc.
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=x1MDAAAAYAAJ&dq=birds&lr=&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&as_brr=1&as_pt=BOOKS&pg=PA114-IA7&ci=70%2C93%2C823%2C1231&source=bookclip"><img alt="The Snowy Owl (from The Birds of America by John James Audubon)" width="150" src="http://books.google.com/books?id=x1MDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA114-IA7&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U2YxgFzR4Xq92Xp4aAqa150VzO9cg&ci=70%2C93%2C823%2C1231&edge=0" /></a>
Google Book Clips As Dividers
Embed An Entire Book
As well as embedding a clip from a book, you can also embed an entire book on your blog or website. (NOTE: because this is done using iframes, you cannot add an entire book to a squidoo lens, but you can add a link to it).
To embed a book in the public domain, while viewing the book, click "Link". This will pop up a box with two pieces of code. The first is the URL for the book (set to the page you are looking at or the search term you have entered - so check it before using it). The second piece of code is what you will need to embed an entire book into a site. You can view an example here: Elizabeth of Bavaria. (Thanks to Chef Keem)
Changing the Image to Suit Your Space
For example the code for the snowy owl above was altered to be a width of 150 pixels (as it was originally far too large to look good on the page), and also aigned to the right side of the area. Here is the code for the snowy owl, so you can see where to place the width and align tags:
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=x1MDAAAAYAAJ&dq=birds&lr=&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&as_brr=1&as_pt=BOOKS&pg=PA114-IA7&ci=70%2C93%2C823%2C1231&source=bookclip"><img width="150" align="right" src="http://books.google.com/books?id=x1MDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA114-IA7&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U2YxgFzR4Xq92Xp4aAqa150VzO9cg&ci=70%2C93%2C823%2C1231&edge=0" /></a>
Wait, I can't find the clip tool on this book?!?!
The best way to find books in the public domain is to use the advanced search on Google Books, and then clicking the button of Public Domain only.
More Tips on Adding Images to Your Pages
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How often do you look at a really great Squidoo lens and wonder how they changed colors or backgrounds or add photos somewhere other than the upper right-hand corner of the module? They use HTML. I'm not a genius at this sort of thing, so every time...
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Add Borders to Your Lens Photos on Squidoo
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Would you like to jazz up the photos on your lenses? You can use borders on your images to give them much more impact and to help them "pop." You just need to use a little bit of simple HTML magic. I have included easy instructions for a variety of...
More About Google Books
The Highly Useful and Highly Debated Google Books
HOWTO: Introduction to Using Google Books
Google Book Search: UC Library Partnership
Google Book Search: Discovering Lincoln's Lost Poetry
Google Book Search: Crafting with Diane
Brent Wilkes on Google Book Search
Charles Brown on Google Book Search
Guestbook
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- 24websurf 24websurf Nov 21, 2009 @ 5:37 pm
- I have used this idea many times now. Thank you! I wish I had been able to do this when I first read this lens ~ Blessed by a Squid Angel ~
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- Jimmie Jimmie Nov 11, 2009 @ 5:47 am
- Kab, just want you to know that when I view this page from China (without a VPN) I don't get the images from Google books. There are images that look like torn paper, and other things that say Image Not Available.
The public domain thing is only available in USA. So it's something to consider if a fair amount of your traffic is from outside USA. I did use this tricky, however, on my latest lens. The way I got around it is to use the picture location URL Google Books gives you and add it to my Tagfoot images. Then Tagfoot gives me HTML that I can add to a lens. Worked quite well! So thanks for the idea even though I had to devise a workaround.
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- Jimmie Jimmie Nov 7, 2009 @ 8:20 am
- Found this lens via a search. Excellent information! I am just now discovering Google books clip tool. THANKS!! (One note -- many of the public domain books are not available if you're accessing them from a non-USA IP.)
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- stargazer00 stargazer00 Oct 19, 2009 @ 8:54 pm
- Oh, this is great! I've used Google Books before but did not know about this. Thanks!
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- Michey Michey Oct 19, 2009 @ 4:48 pm
- Useful lens, Thanks a lot
michey
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