This week, Google announced that they had signed an agreement with the University of Stanford and the University of Michigan to digitalize their complete libraries. Harvard University, University of Oxford, and the New York Public Library have also signed agreements with Google, but will only alow Google to publish parts of their collections.

Already within six months you should be able to use Google to search part of the contents of those libraries, and to be able to read their books that were published before 1923; for books published after that date, you will be shown just some “snippets” of the book, as well as links to where you can buy a copy. Completely digitalizing these libraries is expected to be finished in six years, with Google’s new (and secret) method of scanning. Probably though after that, they will sign agreements with more libraries though.

This will be an extension of the Google Print program, which you can already see a little bit how it works with some copyright books submitted by the publishers, for example, try typing Jules Verne, or Charles Dickens into Google.