"A link to the book will, for instance, likely turn up somewhere among the many items your search will generate. But it may not be listed among the top choices you're given, especially if your search terms are found in other Web material. As it stands right now, the links at the top of any Google search are those that are most popular with Google users.

And even if a link to the Michigan Volunteers book did turn up in your search, you still wouldn't be able to read the whole thing in this case.

That's because, under copyright laws, Google will only be able to provide snippets from many of the libraries' books -- sometimes only two or three sentences that contain the Web surfer's search terms.

It's a different story for books that are in the public domain -- many of them older texts with no copyright restrictions, which are sometimes part of rare collections.

These are the books that Google and the institutions that own them can put online, allowing users anywhere in the world to scroll through them page by page. Examples from the University of Michigan libraries that will appear in full text include such titles as "Darwin, and "After Darwin" and "The Compass and Square with Symbolism."

Other universities that are providing at least some books to Google include Stanford, Harvard and Oxford, as well as the New York Public Library.

"You'll see a highly faithful, photographic, high-resolution image of each page," says John Wilkin, a librarian at the University of Michigan who's been working with members of the so-called "Google Print" project for more than two years. He says that, by mid-2005, Google will have tens of thousands of the university's books in digital format -- and ready to be placed online.

Wilkin doesn't think having books and excerpts online will replace the brick-and-mortar library. But he does envision a day when people will be able to browse "virtual book shelves," arranged by topic or catalog number.

Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association, thinks the value of helping people from anywhere in the world view a library's special collections is "almost priceless."

Still, he is "underwhelmed" with the idea of short excerpts of copyrighted books, which he says provide information that -- unless read as part of the whole book -- is limited and often useless.

"The English language with words out of context doesn't really mean anything," says Gorman, who's also dean of library services at California State University, Fresno.

Other librarians agree that there are kinks that Google will need to work out. For instance, to make sure the library content isn't buried beneath traditional Web content, many think Google will need to create a separate area for searching books only."

From
http://www.freep.com/news/statewire/sw108792_20041215.htm

"You'll see a highly faithful, photographic, high-resolution image of each page."

Oh good. High rez photos are so much more convenient than those tiny little text files. So we can expect a novel will take longer to download than a feature film.

"Still, he is 'underwhelmed' with the idea of short excerpts of copyrighted books..."

Much as I feel about a lo-fi 30-second "preview" of a song.

However...

This is a good idea, which will ultimately need to be converted to text. There is a workforce potential there should anyone decide to take the history of the world seriously.

Of course, the entire 20th century is off limits. Good thing nothing important happened.

Ahh one step close to digital preservation of data, my dream come true God bless that russian guy!

Ooh. they should do a www.sacred-texts.com type thing. There's got to be at least 500 books on that site. But yeah, it sounds like a good idea if you put it in text. A snippet of a book is incomplete. Maybe there'd be authors with older books willing to allow their books to be put up, it'd be great seeing Stephen King's "Misery" on a site like that, for example.

If it wasn't for the greed heads, this would have been here by now. A couple of years ago I bought that copy of National Geographic magazine collection on CD and have never regretted it. Scanning wasn't the best to save on space, but the articles are easy enough to read. The collection has all magazines from 1888 to December 1996.
This library project is what the internet was created for...the free exchange of ideas and knowledge. The geeky Star Trek Gene Roddenberry idea of a future society. It may be naive to expect it, but it would be nice if we could get started down that road.

This might raise an issue when authors realize that people can go to a library and read their books for free. Shut down all the libraries for copywrite infringement! How did they get away with stealing money from the pockets of authors to begin with? Who invented this radical Napsteresque idea!

I've always wondered when someone would do this and make going to the library so much easier. I really don't understand the difference of using technology to read a book online rather than trudge down to the brick and mortar building the old fashioned way. How does the technological solution violate copywrite while the old fashioned way does not?

BTW: A lot of libraries lend out CDs and movie DVDs. I wonder why the RIAA and MPAA hasn't cracked down on this practice yet?

High-res photos of the book are very good if its a very old book. I've seen some books at the royal library here from the 15th century that are really quite beautiful.

http://base.kb.dk/pls/hsk_web/hsk_vis.forside?p_hs_loebenr=23

Ive studied the DRM system used by google to disable print, save and copy functions when viewing books. I must say they are most impressive.

Firstly, they are very hard to break. Not impossible, but hard. And they work cross browser, which is itsself a miracle of programming.

Most impressive through... noone except the engineers responsible has the slightest idea how it works! Its incredable. Somehow their combination of doing things that alone would be just not-quite-right results in disableing functions without crashing any browsers.

Of course, screenshot programs work as well as ever.

"BTW: A lot of libraries lend out CDs and movie DVDs. I wonder why the RIAA and MPAA hasn't cracked down on this practice yet?"

Because under current copyright law, libraries are exempt from infringement as long as the material is used for educational purposes (and I do not see why it wouldn't be, unless you find a book on Cary Sherman and burn it in a pile of crap)

"The geeky Star Trek Gene Roddenberry idea of a future society. It may be naive to expect it, but it would be nice if we could get started down that road."

We're still working on the Jefferson/Madison idea of a perfect society. In two or three hundred years, we may be ready to move on to the next stage but we haven't got this one right yet.