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Google Undertakes Huge Library-Search Project

By Antone Gonsalves, TechWeb News

Google Inc. on Tuesday said it is working with major university libraries to scan their collections and make them searchable online, a huge undertaking that reflects how the search giant is inching into markets that could someday put it into direct competition with giant Internet retailer Amazon.com.

The project involves digitally scanning the library collections of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, the University of Oxford and The New York Public Library, the Mountain View, Calif., search giant said. The effort is an expansion of the Google Print program, a service that assists publishers in making books and other offline information searchable online.

Google won't disclose how many books are currently searchable in the program, but said the University of Michigan, for example, has more than 7 million books in its collection. Harvard has more than twice as many books.

"It will take years to do, and our goal is to do it quickly, but there's a lot of challenges along the way and we'll have a better estimate (of the time it will take) as we get further along," Susan Wojcicki, director of product management for Google, said.

Read more: http://www.techweb.com/wire/ebiz/55301768