Book People Archive

How to find the correct volume and issue number in Google Books

The University of Michigan gives search tips for Google Books:

http://www.lib.umich.edu/mdp/GoogleBooks.pdf

Excerpt:

"There is no, single "right" way to find the needed year or volume
number. There are some general tips, though, to try to tease this
information out of Google Book Search. All of these tips should be
used in the Search in this book search box:
* Search for the title of the journal. Sometimes this will show you a
snippet that includes a running header that will contain a year or a
volume number.
* Search for the words "volume" and "issue".
* Search for the word "subscriptions". Many times, journals will have
a subscription information section that will include the pricing for
the current year (and it will tell you which year is the 'current'
year).
* After trying these three options, you may have a feel for the time
period, but perhaps not an exact year. If you have been seeing dates
hovering around the 1950's, try searching for years, like "1956", and
"1957". Chances are, if you have results for "1956", but no results
for "1957", the issue you are looking at is probably from 1956 or
1955.
Once you've got the volume and issue number, you'll likely still need
to know the page numbers of the full article you're looking for.
Contact a library that has this title and ask if you can get the page
numbers of the article you're interested in, then use your local
library's interlibrary loan department if an issue isn't near to where
you are."

I can add the following tips:

- Try to find "Tables of content" (TOC) of the journal online.
- There are often "Key words and phrases" Google presents. This might
be useless to represent the content of the volume but this keywords
are often taken from the TOC. You can compare them with an online-TOC
or quotations of articles found via Google or Google Scholar.
- You can make the same with the "sections" content Google gives.
- Use "Jahrgang" or "Band" when searching journals in German (Sample)
- If there are "other editions" look at the dates. If the dates are
differing it might be that the Google's publication date "Published"
is right. (But it also might be it is wrong ...)

An example for identifying the volume:

http://books.google.com/books?q=nassauische+annalen+schwaben&btnG=Search+Books

1972 is evidently wrong, because by searching the volume
"Alterthumskunde" appears often. It must be an XIXth century volume:

http://books.google.com/books?id=9j0KAAAAIAAJ&dq=nassauische+annalen+schwaben&q=nassauische+annalen+&pgis=1#search

Searching for "jahrgang" doesn't help.

Searching for "band" gives the hypothesis that it might volume 6.

The TOC is online at:
http://www.erlangerhistorikerseite.de/zfhm/nassa6.html

Some tests with words taken from the keywords and sections (aesculap,
limpurg ...) were failing. If one takes "inschriften" from the
online-TOC: bingo! It is volume 6, 1859/60:

http://books.google.com/books?id=9j0KAAAAIAAJ&dq=nassauische+annalen+schwaben&q=inschriften&pgis=1#search

It often takes long time to find the right issue.

Unfortunately, "as opposed to other countries, in Germany, Austria,
and Switzerland, typesetting in Fraktur was very common still in the
early 20th century" (Wikipedia). If there are right recognized words
in Fraktur journals it is very hard or impossible to find out the
volume as described!

Klaus Graf