Legal Research

Mobile Books

From Inside Google Book Search Blog

1.5 million books in your pocket

"One of the great things about an iPhone or Android phone is being able to play Pacman while stuck in line at the post office. Sometimes though, we yearn for something more than just playing games or watching videos.

What if you could also access literature's greatest works, such as Emma and The Jungle Book, right from your phone? Or, some of the more obscure gems such as Mark Twain's hilarious travelogue, Roughing It? Today we are excited to announce the launch of a mobile version of Google Book Search, opening up over 1.5 million mobile public domain books in the US (and over half a million outside the US) for you to browse while buying your postage.

While these books were already available on Google Book Search, these new mobile editions are optimized to be read on a small screen. To try it out and start reading, open up your web browser in your iphone or Android phone and go to http://books.google.com/m."

There's more backstory in the full posting.

And so it begins. Do libraries need to keep classics or pubic domain collections if everyone has access via their phone? When will this become an issue? Ever? or now?

Have you reviewed Google Book Search beta lately? 20,000 current publishers involved along with quite a few libraries. My vanity search found many books I'd written for or was named in that I'd forgotten or didn't know about.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on February 06, 2009 (boomark / email).