Google to scan books at 5 libraries

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc. is trying to establish an online reading room for five major libraries by scanning stacks of hard-to-find books into its widely used Internet search engine.

The ambitious initiative announced late Monday gives Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., the right to index material from the New York public library as well as libraries at four universities — Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and Oxford in England.

The Michigan and Stanford libraries are the only two so far to agree to submit all their material to Google's scanners.

The New York library is allowing Google to include a small portion of its books no longer covered by copyright while Harvard is confining its participation to 40,000 volumes so it can gauge how well the process works. Oxford wants Google to scan all its books originally published before 1901.

Both Google and Amazon.com already have programs that offer online glimpses of new books while an assortment of other sites for several years have provide digital access to some material in libraries scattered around the country.

Scanning books so they can be read through computers isn't new, but Google's latest commitment could have the biggest impact yet, given the breadth of material that the company hopes to put into its search engine, which has become renowned for its processing speed, ease of use and accuracy.

"It's a significant opportunity to bring our material to the rest of the world," said Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library. "It could solve an old problem: If people can't get to us, how can we get to them?"

Librarians are also excited about the prospect of creating a digital record for the reams of valuable material written long before computers were conceived.

"This is the day the world changes," said John Wilkin, a University of Michigan librarian working with Google. "It will be disruptive because some people will worry that this is the beginning of the end of libraries. But this is something we have to do to revitalize the profession and make it more meaningful."

The project gives Google's search engine another potential drawing card as it faces stiffening competition for Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN. Attracting visitor traffic is crucial to Google's financial health because the company depends on revenue generated by people clicking on advertising links posted next to the main body of search results.

Scanning the library books figures to be a daunting task, even for a cutting-edge company such as Google, whose online index of 8 billion Web pages already has revolutionized the way people look for information.

Michigan's library alone contains 7 million volumes — about 132 miles of books. Google hopes to get the job done at Michigan within six years. Harvard's library is even larger with 15 million volumes.