Google boosts book search

Stephen Withers
Friday, 18 May 2007 15:36

Your IT - Home IT

Following the well-publicised 'universal search' update to its search engine, Google has rolled out another improvement with much less fanfare, this time for finding books.

Google Book Search has been expanded to include "millions of other books that still just exist in the analog world," according to Adam Mathes, product manager for Google Book Search.

Although the text of these books isn't accessible - if they haven't been digitised, how could it be? - catalogue entries are available showing title, author, publisher, ISBN and other details. This information is drawn from union catalogues in various countries and other sources.

Naturally, you'll also see links to online booksellers, and one to the WorldCat library catalogue. Unfortunately, WorldCat's geographical coverage is patchy, but that's not Google's fault.