Sci-Fi author and blogger Cory Doctorow has written an excellent article at BoingBoing on why Google Book Search is one of the greatest things to ever happen to the internet. Typical of his writing, it’s well worth the read and he demonstrates, at least in this case, how Google’s building of the new Library of Alexandria is good for all of us, even writers and publishers. If you haven’t tried using the Google Library feature yet, you should check it out. I have been amazed at just how large of a collection they are serving up.(I had begun a post on Google’s Book Search for media week, but never got to posting it since last week was also insanely-busy-at-work week. Doctorow makes a better argument than I ever could, anyway.)

If you haven’t tried using the Google Library feature yet, you should check it out. I have been amazed at just how large of a collection they are serving up. According to Wired, this doesn’ t yet include the disputed works. I’ve been able to find some very obscure engineering texts as well, but just typing in the name of the book and searching.

Examples

• Structural Renovations of Buildings by Alexander Newman, which was recommended to me by a friend at a recent seminar.

So far, this feature is not unlike the "Look Inside The Book" feature at Amazon. However, having the world’s texts in searchable format has the potential for enourmous change in research. Of course, it will take someone like Google to sort out all the information and actually find something relevant.