Google scanning in huge stacks of books

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Stacks of hard-to-find books are being scanned into Google's widely used Internet search engine in its attempt to establish a massive online reading room for five major libraries.

Material from the New York public library as well as libraries at four universities - Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and Oxford - will be indexed on Mountain View, Calif.-based Google under the ambitious initiative announced late Monday.

The Michigan and Stanford libraries are the only two so far to agree to submit all their material to Google's scanners.

The New York library is allowing Google to include a small portion of its books no longer covered by copyright while Harvard is confining its participation to 40,000 volumes so it can gauge how well the process works. Oxford wants Google to scan all its books originally published before 1901.

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You gotta admit, this is pretty damned cool. I don't know what effect it will have on my blogging, but it'll be pretty nice to be able to access more than just Shakespeare and the Bible. It's kind of a shame that this won't be happening more quickly; this could be pretty helpful to my graduate studies. Ah, well. For the time being, it's still the libarary for me.

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