This is a few days old, but it is still an important bit of news : Google has opened it’s Application Programming Interface (API) to developers. What this means for libraries is that they now have the potential to link their catalogs, via ISBN, OCLC, or LCCN numbers, to items available through the Google Book Search.
As with many of Google’s offerings, there are caveats : there doesn’t seem to be a way to generate any information to indicate full-text availability (the information from Google loads after your OPAC entry), which makes it harder to know just how much it adds to your collection.
As time goes by, however, this could become a powerful tool to leverage our library presence… this is another step in making as much information available to the user as possible, and making it easy to find as well. Libraries should look into making this work for them… everyone stands to benefit.
