The tantalizing vision of universal access to the cultural and scientific heritage of humanity seemed close to fulfillment in 2008, when Google announced the settlement of a class-action lawsuit charging that its Google Book Search project infringed copyright by scanning in-copyright books from major research-library collections. But it was not to…

The ability to search and receive results in more than one database through a single interface--or metasearch--is something many users want. Google Scholar--the search engine of specifically scholarly content--and library metasearch products like Ex Libris's MetaLib, Serials Solution's Central Search, WebFeat, and products based on MuseGlobal used…

Five of the world's largest libraries have joined Google in a herculean effort to digitize millions of books and make every sentence searchable. The project involves libraries at Harvard and Stanford Universities, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Oxford, in England, as well as the New York Public Library. It could…