Librarian Central

Google Book Search: An Introduction

By Jen Grant, Product Marketing Manager, Google Book Search

In the late 1990's, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were at Stanford University working on their PhDs in computer science. In the midst of a project to improve digital libraries, they had an idea: what if every book in the world could be scanned and sorted for relevance by analyzing the number and quality of citations from other books? While creating a searchable index of the world's books seemed beyond the realm of possibility at the time, it was this concept, applied to the web, that led to the development of Google's PageRank algorithms, which are still the heart of Google search today. So while Google is known for searching web pages, its founders have been thinking about books from the very beginning.

Years later, after Google achieved success in online search, Larry picked up the idea again. Sitting in the office one day, he and Marissa Mayer, one of our first product managers, used a metronome to keep rhythm as they turned the pages of a 300-page book to see how long it would take to get through a book without damaging the pages. It took them about 40 minutes to reach the end. This experiment was the beginning of what would first be called Google Print, and later, Google Book Search. It was also a first step in developing new technology to digitize books faster than before while maintaining their condition and physical integrity.

After further developing the technology and forging partnerships with publishers and libraries around the world, we launched the beta Book Search tool in 2005 so people could begin searching through every word and phrase of every book in the index. You can enter a search, view a results page similar to a web results page, and then can choose which of the results you wish to view. The question is, how much of a book can we show you once you click on a result? In keeping with copyright law and fair use doctrine, we are careful about the amount of text you can see. Accordingly, you see different amounts of text depending on a book's copyright status.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of books in Google Book Search: public domain books, in-print books, and out-of-print books. When we were developing Google Book Search, the easiest place to start was with the display of public domain books – in the U.S., this would include books published before 1923. Once we've verified that a book is in the public domain, we display the full text online so that anyone can read it from start to finish. In addition, we provide links to help you find the book "offline": Open WorldCat links to help you locate the book in a library, and links to online retailers that sell used books so you can purchase a copy.

Here's an example of how one student found a public domain book from a somewhat remote location:

I was helping a college student who was home for the weekend and was looking for primary source material for a term paper on juvenile delinquency in London in the mid 1800's—not an easy topic to research in a suburban New Jersey public library. But I showed her how to use Google Book Search and she found the "perfect" book in the public domain and in the Harvard University collection. Before Google Book Search, there would have been no way she would have had access to that title, and without Google Book Search's indexing, there would have been no way she would have even known the information she needed was in that book.

– Janice Perrier, Reference Librarian, Roxbury Public Library, Succasunna, NJ

But according to OCLC, public domain books represent only 20 percent of books in the world. For Google to create a comprehensive index of books, we needed to find ways to include books that are still in copyright.

To start, we developed the Google Books Partner Program as a way to include books currently sold in bookstores as well as an opportunity for publishers to promote their books and gain exposure on Google. Similar to Amazon's Search Inside the Book, copyright holders allow us to show you a "Limited Preview," so that you can browse a portion of the book and determine whether you want to buy it – and we include links to bookstores right next to the book page.

Currently, most of the books in the index are from the Partner Program, so we have many stories from people who have written to tell us about their experiences finding and buying books through Google Book Search. Here's one of them:

I was searching for a topic called "simulated annealing in VLSI." It's a small topic, and I've searched in local libraries but couldn't find anything. I tried Google Book Search and found many books, and I immediately bought two.

– Kalyan, Embedded Systems Engineer, Evanston, IL

The Partner Program has helped make newer books discoverable by more people, as well as helping publishers reach new audiences and increase book sales. But indexing only public domain books and in-print books leaves out the largest group of books: those that may remain under copyright, but are out of print and no longer available in a bookstore. We'd have the old and the new, but we'd miss a substantial portion in the center.

Just how substantial a portion are these out-of-print books that are still in copyright? As we note above, according to OCLC, public domain books represent 20 percent of books. Some estimates for the percentage of books that are currently in print put it at only 5 percent. That leaves 75 percent or more of the world's books in what technology publisher Tim O'Reilly calls the "Twilight Zone" — that is, they are no longer available in a bookstore, but, since they were published after 1923, they may not yet be in the public domain. In many cases, the copyright status is difficult to determine: the rights may have reverted to the author; the author may have died and the rights now belong to the author's estate; or the rights could have been passed on to an heir without that person knowing it. In addition, the publishing company could have gone out of business, or been purchased by another company that now holds the rights. It's also possible that the book could in fact have risen to the public domain, but there's no documentation to prove it.

With Google Book Search, our goal is to build a comprehensive index that enables people to discover all books. We needed to find a way to include these "Twilight Zone" books that respects copyright law, but also enables people to find books. That's why we developed two additional ways to display books. The first is just basic bibliographic information about the book, and the second is this same basic information plus a few snippets of text surrounding your search term to give you a sense of the context. In both cases, we show links to bookstores and libraries to help you locate places where you can get the full book. And, as with our web search, any copyright holder can exclude their books from this catalog-like listing should they so desire.

Here you can see all four ways that books are displayed on Google Book Search:

     
No Preview Available   Snippet Preview   Limited Preview   Full View

Since we launched the beta search tool in 2005, we've received lots of feedback from publishers and authors who have sold more books and readers who have discovered them. We've also heard from librarians about how they are using Google Book Search in their library:

For the third time in the past week, I've been able to answer thorny reference questions using Google Book Search that I otherwise would have simply given up on... I tried Google Book Search and lo and behold – there was my mystery reference. That was more than enough to steer me to the proper volume on the shelves here at the library. Mission accomplished!

– Tom, Library Assistant, Gloucester, MA

Earlier this week our new Teen Services librarian was helping a fifth-grader try to find a book for a report… She had looked in all the sections she thought were applicable in the shelves and found nothing. So she tried Google Book Search. In the end, they found a book in a section they would never otherwise have thought to look. Child: happy, staff: happy, homework: saved.

– Jaemi, Librarian, Goshen NY

Try Google Book Search for yourself at books.google.com or read about what legal scholars, librarians, authors, publishers, and readers are saying about it at our News & Views website. And we recently launched Inside Google Book Search, the official Google Book Search blog. It includes tips for using Google Book Search, highlights from interesting books that users have told us about, pictures from events we attend, and more.