Google Print gets its start today with a live index of works already in the public domain.
Current legal undertakings of course put a bit of a damper on the launch, but nevertheless, I suspect its not a fight that Google plans to give up on easily. It was interesting to read that Google will steer clear of advertising on scanned pages of materials coming from participating libraries or materials in the public domain.
I only briefly played with Google Print but I was really struck wondering whether this was going to be the new benchmark for finding materials in monographs, if only, because of the popularity and influence of Google.
Average Joe public could get pretty used to being able to look up bits and pieces — a few words or a sentence– from within books. Will people have the same expectations for our print collections?
Nevertheless, we have to be where the user is — so getting the sidebar to display “Borrow this Book” alongside “Buy this Book” just has to happen. (Sounds liek a job for Greasemonkey, COinS, and PAC stations with Firefox)
