If Google follows through on one of their latest proposals, students may soon be able to read entire books from their personal computers.
The company announced plans last month to lead a project that will put the collections of five universities' libraries in an online database.
The virtual library -- which can be found at scholar.google.com -- will enable computer users to access full texts of most books from their computers. It will also aid students by providing access to otherwise hard-to-find, out-of-print and rare books.
Google plans to make the contents of the books fully searchable free-of-charge. For copyrighted works, computer users will be able to see what part of a search matches text from a book and a couple of lines surrounding the matching text.
The cost of downloading entire books has yet to be determined, but most reports are that there will be a cost of about $10 for an entire book. Non-copyrighted works will be available for free.
The database will include all books from Stanford University and the University of Michigan's libraries, and portions of Oxford University, Harvard University and New York University's collections.
Although Penn is not one of the five universities taking part in the virtual library, efforts are underway to improve online access to academic works.
Penn has created a program called Scholarly Commons that allows School of Engineering professors to put their works in an online database.
Director of Library Public Services Sandra Kerbel said, "We're using Google's technology to make the content available."
She said that through projects like Scholarly Commons, "We're trying to gauge whether people read online."
Assistant Director of Research and Instructional Services Marjorie Hassen said most people use online databases to read portions of works, but not entire books.
The library also allows Penn students to access Google Scholar, a special search engine for academic works. Google Scholar gives links to articles from academic magazines. Using the Penn library's subscriptions, students can view articles for free that would otherwise charge a fee.
According to Penn Computer and Information Science Professor Michael Kearns, Google's online library will present many problems. For one, acquiring permission from publishers to list copyrighted works may be hard.
Another challenge is the limited lifespan of virtual information.
"Digital media is not nearly as perpetual as people think it is," Kearns said.
"If we're talking about trying to archive material for 100 years, it isn't guaranteed that it will be there," he added.
Kerbel also warned that students might be misled by only having access to a small snippet of a book, as one section of a book might not represent the rest of the book.
Penn students had a mixed reaction to Google's plans. College sophomore Bing Li said that he "didn't think [he'd] pay for [books online] because we have so many resources in our library and we've already paid for them."
Nursing Graduate student Rita Mack was hesitant to pay money to view a book online
"If I had to pay $10, I'd be more inclined to buy the book in a store so I could hold in my hands," she said.
She added that one downside of buying a book online is that "sitting at a computer isn't as comfortable."
Kearns said, "It's still an open question whether people want to buy an online book."
Still, some students feel that the Google's service will provide a welcome alternative to a traditional library.
College junior Dave Vorhouse noted that "it would save time from going to the library."
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