This may be more of an IMHO or MPSIMS or even GD but I’ll leave it to the mods.
I’m playing with Google Print. I thought they were going to do full-text digitization of copyright free and or public domain works, but instead it’s covers and back covers and table of contents.
Forgive what may be a very stupid question, but who is their user base for this? What does it accomplish that Amazon or Worldcat or LoC.gov’s catalog doesn’t do (other than, perhaps, pictures)? Am I missing something?
Well, there are some serious copyright issues and questions. If Google gets the rights, they do allow you to search within the book (I’m looking at this one right now – Copyright 2002). You can search within the book for references to a particular word.
It’s set up to only show a few pages at a time. So, in the book indicated, if I were doing a paper on Siegfried and Roy, you can search on that term and find references. In theory, it will make it easier to do research.
It could also wreck the publishing industry, or at least drastically reduce the number of nonfiction books published, but that moves away from the basics.