Google Inc. is making out-of-copyright books available to download free of charge. Consumers will be able to use Google’s Book Search service to download a PDF files of the books available for later reading.
“Public domain books include both well-known classics and less well-known books on every conceivable subject,” said Sidney Verba, director of the Harvard University Library, a partner in the Google Books Library Project, in a statement. “Since people can search the full text of these books, they can find previously buried information about historical events or people, places of interest and matters cultural or scientific. What has been tucked away in large research library collections and available only to a few, can now be discovered and read by people everywhere.”
Copyrighted books will not be available for download but Google displays basic bibliographic information and, in many cases, small snippets of text surrounding a search term.
There is no easy way to find a list of these books but if you select the “Full view books” option below the search box on the Google Book Search home page and do a serach. Click on one of the books that comes up. Over the right hand-side, in the column just below the title, you should see a “Download” button. That will let you download the book in PDF format. Search Engine Watch, The Wall Street Journal.
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