Just in case you missed it elsewhere, Google has announced it's plans to digitise the content from five of the worlds leading academic libraries, and to make them accessible via Google Print. The ambitious initiative will include the full libraries of MIT and Stanford, together with selected archives from Harvard, Oxford and the New York public library. According to Susan Wojcicki, director of product management at Google, the project aims to “…unlock the wealth of information that is offline and bring it online”. Whilst the scanning of books to facilitate their online presentation is nothing new (both Google, via it's Google Print initiative, and Amazon.com have been doing this for some time), the breadth of material being gathered by Google is likely to have a huge impact - the MIT libraries alone hold seven million volumes (which, it is estimated, will take 6 years to digitise).
According to a recent article on the BBC website, where the books are subject to copyright, users will only be presented with access to bibliographies and extracts. It is worth noting, however, that the New York Public Library is allowing Google to include a small portion of books no longer covered by copyright, and that according to Google Print, this material will be available to read online in its entirety.
Further information about this initiative can be found online at SearchEngineWatch.
