Ballard, Terry Prof. in: Book People
02.02.2007 18:51

I've got some fascinating anecdotal evidence that Google is
seriously ramping up their books project. Our library owns a set of 4400
sets of microfiched books from the 19th century, Library of American
Civilization. They seem like a great thing until students look at them
and find that they are in a weird format about the size of a credit
card, and the visual quality is challenged at best. Each year we run a
check of the U of Pennsylvania list to find which of these titles is
available free online and add a link to our catalog when it is. In 6
years of checking, we'd added 420 titles, or about 10 per cent of the
collection. I happened to have a student check Google Books last month
to see if they'd added anything new since August. They had - by the time
we'd added everything, the size of our linked LAC file nearly tripled.
Overnight, a quarter of the collection is linked. You can see the
results at:

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1849.xml

Terry

Terry Ballard, Automation Librarian