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13 Feb 09 - 10:34 PM (#2566491) Subject: Tech: 'No preview available'? No problem! From: Jim Dixon You can sometimes tease more information out of Google Books than they want to give you. Here's an example of how it can be done. I've been trying to trace back to their sources some of the songs on the album "The Tale of Ale: The Story of the Englishman and His Beer." (Results so far are posted in this thread.) One of the songs was O ALE AB ALENDO. "rob d" had already provided a quote, although he was uncertain of some of the words: O Ale Ab Alendo thou liquor of lifeI found several sources for "O Ale Ab Alendo" but most of them lacked the ending "drink like a fish." So I set up the search argument with two phrases, thus: "o ale ab alendo" "drink like a fish"That gave me exactly one result: Love and DrolleryThe words "No preview available" means it won't be easy, but I'm not ready to give up. At least we have some new words, which are not quite the same as what rob d has given us, but close enough to let us know we are on the right track. Next, let's search again, using these new words as our new search argument: "Although it will never Be as big as I wish"This finds the same book again, but with a bit more new text: Love and DrolleryThis process can be iterated. Next, I search using "But mine is too little To sound the least tittle"This finds Love and DrollerySo we seem to be at an impasse; we haven't gained any new words. But no—there is another trick we can use. We already tentatively know some words that come before "But mine is too little", so we can add them to the search argument: "liquor of life" "But mine is too little To sound the least tittle"This gives Love and DrolleryNow it has given us the words that span the gap between "liquor of life" and "But mine is too little". Just to make sure we haven't missed any words before "liquor of life", we can search again using "O ale ab alendo" "would I had a mouth"And we get Love and DrolleryNow all we have to do is piece together all the words we have found. We can use the capitalized words as indications of where the line breaks belong. I'm guessing the first "O ale ab alendo" is the title of the piece: O ale ab alendo |
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14 Feb 09 - 09:41 AM (#2566714) Subject: RE: Tech: 'No preview available'? No problem! From: pavane I have been doing exactly that for some time, but there will come a point where Google obstinately refuses to provide anything new. Sometimes this is due to end of a page, but other times, if you can GUESS a word or phrase which is on the page, you will get a new selection! Not really relevant to this example, but in the genealogy book, you can sometimes put in the name of a known relative to get more information. (Unfortunately, my Google Books access has just been blocked here, though) |
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14 Feb 09 - 09:59 AM (#2566725) Subject: RE: Tech: 'No preview available'? No problem! From: Jack Campin I've got Wardroper's book somewhere (will need a lot of tidying up to find it), so let me know if you need that checked out. |
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04 Feb 13 - 01:49 PM (#3475732) Subject: RE: Tech: 'No preview available'? No problem! From: GUEST,Ray Hall The words come from a three part catch (round) by John Hilton first published in his "Catch that catch can" of 1652. We do not (yet) sing this but The Aldrich Catch Club regularly sings many by Hilton |