There's a very interesting article in the most recent issue of Campus Technology that takes a long, thorough look at Google's Book project and how it's going. It starts out with "Once you get past the freakishly high numbers bandied about, the two-dozen-plus distinguished institutions that have signed on, the legal paranoia and the ultra-ultra-secret processes and technologies involved-you'll find that Book Search (from the fifth most valuable company in America) is simply another high-cost effort that is simultaneously visionary and crude. It doesn't even have to succeed in order to impact the transformation of scholarship activities."
The author interviewed Daniel Clancy, the engineer in charge of the project, who has many interesting things to say. Food for thought: "As you open up all this content, these are research challenges for libraries, for the research communities, and for Google to say: How does this change scholarship?"
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