Fast Ways to Find Free Cancer Books
Hey I love the book store but, let’s face it, buying a bunch of cancer books can get expensive – especially when you’re a patient with medical expenses to consider.
And with chemotherapy, radiation, surgery or lab tests on the schedule, it can be hard to find the time to drive from library to library looking for good books to help you get smart about your condition.
Well, the folks at Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) are helping make cancer education a little easier. Google Book Search offers a wide variety of health books you can read for free, as well as previews of other books that haven’t entered the public domain yet. Thousands of educational books and academic journals covering oncology, medicine and nutrition from experts like the National Cancer Institute and the World Health Organization, as well as other science-related texts of interest to researchers and students (physics, chemistry, etc.) are available and easy to access.
My favorite feature: If you want to read a book using the traditional method — away from a computer screen — Google’s site will quickly assemble a list of the public libraries in your state which carry the title. I did a quick search and found more than 43,000 cancer-related titles in less than three seconds. If you decide you’d like to have the book for your permanent collection, the site also lets you know about book retailers offering the book for sale.
For those of you who want a break from studying cancer, fictional literature is available too.
Google Book Search has been around for a few years, but new titles are being added all the time so consider visiting the site again if you haven’t been there in a while. In fact, the University of California, San Diego announced earlier this month that it will be providing Google Book Search access to several million books from their extensive library so their contents can be digitized into Google’s growing database. UCSD is the first university in Southern California to commit to the project. As one UCSD librarian said,
“The library of the 21st century must effectively deliver knowledge and information in an increasingly hybrid environment where the physical and digital coexist. We are thrilled to be a contributor and partner with Google in this effort because it greatly expands access to our collections for faculty, students and members of the public, which is an essential part of our mission.”
Brian E.C. Schottlaender
Audrey Geisel University Librarian, UCSD
If you’re looking for more publications written for cancer patients or professionals, you can find additional information at the following links:
American Cancer Society Publications
CDC Cancer Resource Library
National Cancer Institute Publications
Sources: UCSD News Center and CancerResearchJournal.com
Related Links: The Stanford Daily; The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
Related Podcast: Public Access to NIH Research from Science Friday on NPR
Technorati Tags: health literacy; health tools; medical publishing; ePatients; eBooks
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