Google Books Project

Google Books is a giant catalog millions of books on almost any topic. Google intends to scan every books ever published, and to make full texts searchable, in the same way that web sites can be searched on the company’s search engine at google.com.

Google provides full access to public domain books (or those for which permission has been obtained from the publisher).

For copyrighted books there is limited ability to search by keyword and view a limited number of pages. The Google Books Project does not put entire books online for free. If a book still protected by copyright, the user’s search results will show only the brief section of the book that includes the world or phrase searched and the page number it appears on, along with details about the book.

The project started around 2003 when Google approached the Library of Congress with proposal to digitize all the books in the library. The Library of Congress offered a counterproposal that would only include public domain books, Google did not follow up.

In the December 2004 Google announcing that it partnerships with libraries at the University of Michigan, Harvard and Stanford, the Bodleian Library at Oxford and the New York Public Library to digitalize all or large portions of their print collections, which would cover more than 15 million volumes.

The number of partners continues to grow. The University of California, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Virginia and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid joined in 2006.

In collaboration with the participating libraries Google scans books in the public domain along with copyrighted books. The company also intends to scan out-of print books, which benefits individuals searching for books that might otherwise be difficult or impossible to find.
Google Books Project

The power of Google

Search engines are magical machines. It is a software system that allows users to locate an internet resource – a web page, news group entry or other public file based on some search characteristic.

They’re mysterious black boxes that accept the requests for information and somehow manage to locate relevant regardless of where in the Web (or in the world) it’s located.

The Google search engine is simply the biggest and most successful search engine presently available.

Google was built by some seriously smart people and the company employs more than 200 PhDs.

The company was incorporated as Google Inc, on September 7, 1998. The data Google provides via it search capabilities were previously available in sources such as phone books, scholarly journals, library archives, restaurant menu, and newspaper.

Google has just dominated the market share in organizing and expediting access to the world’s information stores.

Google desktop enables users to search their own computer. Google Scholar allows specialized searches of material relevant in the academic world. Google Book Search provides an index to a vats array of books from leading libraries around the world.

Google images provides a comprehensive search engine of images. Google also provides limited capabilities for locating images based on the name of the file containing the image.

The Google advantage is the ability to index documents in a wide variety of information storage mechanism and the means for retrieving data in unified manner, with zero end user training.
The power of Google 

Google Books Library Project

Google Books is a database of millions of books on almost any topic. It is a search tool that searches the full text of the books that Google has digitalized and added to its database.

According to Google, the aim of the project make it easier for people to find relevant books – specifically, books they wouldn't find any other way such as those that are out of print – while carefully respecting authors' and publishers' copyrights.

The project started around 2003 when Google approached the Library of Congress with proposal to digitize all the books in the library. When the Library of Congress offered a counterproposal that would only include public domain books, Google did not follow up.

Google then turned other major libraries including those at the University of Michigan, Oxford University and Harvard University and the New York Public Library with some success.

The Google Library Project began in 2004 with the announcement that to would be digitizing the collections of five major university libraries, which would cover more than 15 million volumes.

In 2010 42 libraries cooperated with Google. Most libraries have restricted their collaboration to collections in the public domain.

The libraries of the University of Michigan and Stanford University have given Google permission to digitize their complete collection, including works still protected by copyright law.

It is an amazing resource and the good of using Google books that it can help educators assess the content of a book for its relation to the topic, readability level and to teach students about public domain materials and copyright laws.

Its user will be able to identify which books are likely most germane to be a specific inquiry, to locate the pages on which the search term appears, and to get limited sense  of what the book might say with regard to the subject of the user’s search.

Google will also list local libraries where the book might be found and post links to third parties, like Amazon.com, where users may purchase the book or view or download portions of it for a price.

Google Books has provided scholars the ability to engage on primary research in a way that did not exist till now. Google Books has taken some limitations such as lack of funding, travelling and research at various locations by scanning historical documents that would have been difficult to obtain through traditional modes.
Google Books Library Project