Google to digitize library collections.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: News, Trends & Analysis

A new project from Google Inc. will allow Internet users to visit some of the world's most prestigious libraries without leaving their homes. The search engine giant has announced a partnership with five university and public libraries to digitize millions of books in their collections and make portions of the text available online for free.

Participating libraries include those at Stanford University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Oxford University; and the New York Public Library.

Users will be able to type key words into Google's main Web search site to retrieve links to portions of text from library books. The books-related results will appear at the top of the search-result page. When users click on a book-related result, images of the relevant scanned pages with their search terms highlighted will appear. Google's service also allows users to type in their ZIP code to find out whether books that show up in their search results are owned by their local libraries.

How much of each publication is accessible will depend on copyright restrictions. Books in the public domain will have their full text available through the search engine. For works protected by copyright, Google will show either bibliographic information or snippets of text that appear around a user's search term. When possible, in the search results, Google will point users to libraries where they can access the publications, or to online retail sites where they can purchase copies.

Scanning millions of books, some fragile, is no easy task. According to reports, Google is using its own secret scanning and digitizing technology that it says will not harm older, delicate books. Books will roll into Google's Web search index as they are scanned and digitized. The full text of all publications will be scanned.

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