Google Book Search: Is it the End for the Nation's Libraries?

Now when you're looking for a book you can go no further than your computer's desktop. Internet giant Google has created the Google Book Search. The Google Book Search works much in the same way Googles web search does, by searching the internet for certain search terms except rather than finding them on websites it finds the in books.

Google Book Search results will often return small excerpts of the book, the first few pages, or in some cases the entire book in e-book form.

Every result will give you some of the bibliographic data for the book such as the author, title, length, publication date, and subject. The page will also link to places where you can purchase the book or libraries in your area where you can borrow it.

In the case of out of copyright books and a few others the entire text of the book is available in PDF format for download with the Book search "Full View" function. With the PDF download you can read the book as many times as you want and keep it on your hard drive indefinitely. For other books there is a "limited preview," and a "Snippet View" function. The Limited Preview allows users to have limited access and search ability through full online version of books and the Snippet View allows users to only the "About This book" section and a few short snippets from the book.

Google Book Search was an idea originally thought of in 2002 by a small group of google employees. The employees began "secretly" exploring how long it would take for them to scan every book in the world and make it available online.

Google has recently announced their intentions to try and make books available for purchase directly on your computer desktop without ever having to visit an outside reseller. Google is working on partnerships with book publishers to make e-books available online for purchase directly from the book search page.

If Google starts to make the worlds libraries available for download immediately onto your home computer, how will that effect the nations libraries and bookstores? How do you think Google's Book Search function will affect print books? Do you think digitizing the world's media in inevitable?