Google Scans Enter Michigan Catalog

-- Library Journal, 09/14/2006

University of Michigan (UM) officials have offered a first look at a program called Mbooks which uses scans made by Google in its partnership with UM to offer library patrons the capacity to access text directly from the university's catalog. Under the program, the online catalog will point to an "MBooks" button which, using Google's scans, offers patrons—in the United States, for now—the option of keyword searching within a volume and retrieving the number of times a search term appears per page.

Users can then virtually "flip through" the selected work using a page-turning function. It also offers enhanced functions such as the capacity to zoom in or out on pages or rotate images. UM librarians say they envisioned this development from the inception of their Google partnership. Although just a small number of UM's holdings are now available in MBooks, co-interim university librarian John Price Wilkin said the library is moving ahead at an "unprecedented" rate and eventually all "uncopyrightable works," including government documents and works in the public domain will be available for full-text viewing. Works under copyright—or even assumed to be under copyright, however, are not viewable. Still, UM officials say, the capacity to keyword search within copyrighted works represents progress.