TIL the hard way that Google Books search misses whole editions

I spent 6 months tracking down a 1927 census map for my genealogy project, and Google Books kept returning the same scanned index from 1983. Then I accidentally tried the search inside the Internet Archive's full text collection and found the actual county atlas within 20 minutes. The trick was searching for the exact plate number instead of the county name, which I never would have thought to try. Now I check three different archives before I trust any single result. Has anyone else hit a dead end with one search tool and found the answer in an unexpected library database?

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