On Bart’s blog I posted a question asking for book recommendation on Q and how it might be about a non-Christian Jesus movement that would be totally unfamiliar to most people today. One of the two books he named was published in the early 70s and had no preview on Amazon. I checked Google Books and Google Scholar and somewhat to my surprise found what appears to be a complete copy of Trajectories through Early Christianity by James Robinson and Helmut Koester. It’s not uncommon to find detailed previews on Google so the (what appears to me) complete copy was a bit of a surprise. The book of essays can be found here: ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
Using this example I wanted to point out that Google can sometimes have a surprising amount of text from books you might be considering purchasing. In the recent past I’ve found near complete copies of a book on Papias that I was thinking about getting and John Granger Cook’s soon to be classic (in my opinion) Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World, a lengthy coverage of crucifixion that supposedly discusses just about everything known about crucifixion from the ancient world to date. The latter book, being somewhat scholarly, is going for $210 on Amazon at the moment so you can see why having a good preview on Google is great.
The Internet Archive (** you do not have permission to see this link **) are also good places to look. In my experience Google does not index these sites well, and it is best to search them directly.
When using Google and Google Scholar to search, be aware that any complete texts you find may well be pirated and can vanish at any time. If you find a text in an Institutional Repository (often called a Digital Commons) at a college or university, then it almost certainly has the appropriate copyright clearance and/or license and will remain available for awhile. Out on the open Internet? Publishers may demand that in-copyright files be taken down. It’s a game of whack-a-mole for the publishers, but they do have in interest in defending their revenue.
The complete texts available at the Internet Archive and HathiTrust fall into the public domain or have otherwise been examined for copyright concerns. There are sometimes complaints about how well they have vetted items, but the availability of texts in their databases has proven far more stable.
I wasn’t aware of HathiTrust, thanks for pointing that one out. As it turns out, the James Robinson article was not available in it’s entirety. I didn’t scroll down far enough to see that it was missing the last 20+ pages which is a shame because the part that was available didn’t get into what I was hoping to find which was something that both Prof Ehrman and Mark Goodacre say is in there! I’d still rather get a feel for what I’m looking for in the article than to buy it on the hope that it does…..
Anyway, it’s less common to find ANY kind of preview on Google Books and Scholar than to find one. When you do it’s even less common to find the entire book available (I know at least one trick to get parts of the books shown that are supposed to be hidden). Maybe I’m in the minority, but finding what I’m looking for in a preview makes it far more likely for me to buy a book than not. I’m not interested in book piracy 
From what I’ve seen, finding the majority of a book available in a preview is more common on Amazon than Google. It’s sometimes amazing how much an author or publisher will allow to be shown on there.
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