Google Books

Life Technology
#1

Has everyone–save me–known that Google Books is already up and running?
I thought that they were still busy scanning and fending off lawsuits, and that it wouldn’t by up for a while.

To test it, I went searching for a sci-fi short story I recently read. I think it’s by Arthur C. Clarke (maybe Asimov?) and was used as an engineering text at MIT. It’s about the costs of a quest for perfection (in engineering) when satisfactory will do well enough. Didn’t turn up.

But, when I searched for Machiavelli, on one of the nasty tricks ever, it found it trick enough.

Google’s not saying how many books have been scanned so for, but they’re aiming for EVERYTHING within ten years. I love it!

Oh yeah, here’s a New Yorker article on it.

#2

While they’re working on it, you could work your way through the Gutenberg project.

And your example’s a good one, but I figured that if the author is still alive, all you can do is search for a phrase and it’ll come up, you can’t read the whole book… unless you pay. Maybe they’re gonna become the iTunes of books.

#3

I’ve got the 10,000+ title dvd that Projuect Gutenburg released not so long ago, and I’ve had access to the 32,000,000 title World Cat, but this is something else.

#4

well I just checked it out… and everything I looked at was all listed as "limited preview"s or "snippet"s… that’s including shakespeare, who is most definately dead…

#5

You should select “Full view books”. The number of books published each year on Shakespeare is ridiculous–many of them are snapped up by a few grad students and better libraries only, because they cost so much. Those will be available as snippets only.