Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Flip Side of Google Book Search

I know we've somewhat beaten this subject to death in class, but here is an article bringing up the somewhat less-talked aspect of the infinite Google Book Search drama: it will bring back out-of-print books. If it works this way, it might be used as a public utility (Sorry libraries!)

1 comment:

  1. Actually I think this is wonderful for books. Most books aren't easy to find in library catalogs because they aren't full-text searchable. Perfectly wonderful books with lots of useful content languish on the shelf because no one knows about them. With Google books, people can find what it is they want to read. And if they want a hard copy, the FIND IN A LIBRARY link is *usually* there (although not working as well as I'd like) hiding among the bookstore links, so folks can buy or borrow a copy. This applies to inprint books as well as out of print, and for the inprint, the fact that not all the pages are there, makes this a wonderful advertising tool.

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