Everyone hates buying textbooks. According to a recent government report, college students spend an average of $900 a year on books. After their first time plunking down five hundred or more dollars at BookMarq or Sweeney’s books, most Marquette students begin to look for other sources to purchase books from. Half.com, Amazon and DogEars are all popular internet sellers. After buying online this semester, I ended up saving about twenty percent over buying used book at either of Marquette’s physical bookstores.But there is something even better than saving 20 percent – saving one hundred percent. This is where the internet’s largest search engine steps up to help.

Most students know the search engine Google as a starting point for finding research materials and background information for a paper.

But fewer people know that many full books and articles are available online at Google.

Any books that are out of copyright can be read in their entirety online at Google Books (www.books.google.com). A computer screen is not necessarily the most user-friendly way to read a book, so this wouldn’t be an ideal situation for larger text books. But I am sure everyone has been in a situation where a professor tells them to buy a book and then only assigns a handful of pages for reading. It is disappointing to know that you just handed over twenty dollars for one night’s reading. In those cases, you could save yourself the trouble and the money by looking up the book on Google.

In a quick search, I found a full version of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics that would have helped me with a philosophy class last year. I also came across several books commenting on A Brave New World, which I will be reading for a class this semester.

Even if your text books are still under copyright and not available at Google Books, there are still plenty of opportunities for research right at Google. Google Scholars (www.scholars.google.com) archives scholarly articles and papers for searching. Need to find out what the latest stem cell research finding are? Looking for an interpretation of Shakespeare’s Henry V reflecting on the war in Iraq? Those are all available at Google Scholars.

With a little help from the world’s most popular search engine, you can save yourself some time and money this semester. Really, what more can you ask from a free service?

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