And now, to make life even more complicated

For obvious reasons, I didn't feel like reading an already-digitized book while I was in the British Library--the whole point being to go to the British Library to read otherwise-inaccessible books--so I Googled each title before calling it up.  (Yes, this took a while.)  This led to a somewhat unexpected chain of events:

1) In the USA, I had already searched a bunch of titles and found no sign that they enjoyed a free existence.

2) In the UK, I searched some of these titles again, and...there they were in GoogleBooks.  Say what?

3) Back in the USA, on a lark I began looking up some books I had found available on Amazon in facsimile form, and which had not cropped up in GoogleBooks (or archive.org, or HathiTrust) when I searched in the UK.    And there they are.  

Bear in mind that most of these books bring up only one or two pages of results--we're not talking about combing through thousands, hundreds, or even dozens of hits.  I didn't overlook them; they just weren't there.  It's possible that Google "learned" my preferences, but surely it could have brought up an item it hosts the first time around?

Moreover, I've also found that some books cannot be searched via GoogleBooks at all; you have to use the regular Google search function.  To take a minor example: GoogleBooks pulls up volumes one and three of Mrs. O'Shea Dillon's triple-decker Dark Rosaleen.  Where's volume 2? (You know, the middle of the book?) It turns out you can get it on Google Play or at the French GoogleBooks--but not at the American or English GoogleBooks sites! 

Comments

[UK scholar]

National copyright laws mean that Google Books is different in the US and the UK, and the BL has its own Google Books agreement: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2011/access-to-the-agreement-between-google-books-and-the-british-library

[Miriam]

I guessed that that was the situation. Needless to say, I did a lot of downloading...

[Anne B.]

Could it be that the books were given different titles for US and UK publication? I run into that a lot with Wodehouse. So you can find "Money for Jam" but not "Money in the Bank," even though they're the same book.

[tatiana.larina]

But still, Miriam is reading the authors who for the most part are dead and buried for more than 70 years. I'll never manage to understand the vagaries of the copyright law.