Google

So what's not to like. The advent of google made it more inviting and less distressing (time wasting) to use the internet. I have used it a lot in my library career, to teach internet classes, to instruct new library staff on some of the more interesting facets of the web, to find a picture of a historic cannon that a student needed for a school report, to a ferret out a specific scientific article on an obscure subject for a academic.
Today I looked at Google Books which I haven't used for awhile. The first category of full text books caught me with the title "Beyond the Library of the Future More Alternative Futures for the Public Library" written in 1997. A little dated perhaps but I read the first few pages and I might want to read more. It was written in an engaging manner, not boring textbook stuff.
But did you know you can look at full issues of magazines, pictures at all, as well as classics with free EPUB downloads, books on engineering and technology?
Lots to look at here with links to where you can buy books or borrow them from a library. Google is trying, not without their own gain in mind, to convince us that the massive downloading of all published material is a good thing. If I was an author I probably wouldn't totally agree. It's kind of like giving away a part of you and losing control to you're not sure what.
But for the time being, I don't make my living writing, I make it by working in an library and I think Google Books and other Google products have a place in my repertoire of information service skills but its one of many places I turn to, not the only one. And the jury is still out on whether I believe Google should have full rights to download....