Google will expand its ability for searching books by working with Stanford and Harvard Universities, among others, to digitize out-of-print and copyrighted works.
On Tuesday, the Mountain View, Calif.-based is expected to announce relationships with five major libraries, including the University of Michigan, Oxford University and the New York Public Library, to create digital copies of some books so that they may be searchable using Google. Also on Tuesday, the company will begin sampling some works already scanned for Google Print, the company"s searchable index of books that it formally unveiled in October.
Susan Wojcicki, Google"s director of product management, said the project will evolve over several years. "Libraries have been the keepers of information for centuries," she said. "We"re excited to unlock that wealth of Information." For now, the scope of Google"s relationship with each institution varies. For example, Harvard Publications Director Peter Kosewski said the university is in a pilot program with Google to scan only 40,000 randomly selected books from its collection of 15 million, the largest academic library in the United States dating to the 1630s.