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Google Book Search and UC Library Partnership

Announcement
August 9, 2006

Today, Google Book Search is thrilled to welcome one of the world’s largest libraries – the University of California library – to the Google Books Library Project. The University of California houses more than 100 libraries on its 10 campuses and is considered to have the largest research and academic library in the world. Working together, Google and the University of California libraries will make books from this rich collection searchable on Google Book Search.

For readers, researchers, and book lovers all over the world, this means even more access to the great works of history and culture. So a student, a teacher, a doctor or anyone in a remote corner of the world will be able find information held on library shelves thousands of miles away in California – simply by searching online.

For books in the public domain, readers will be able to view, browse, and read the full texts, including many of the treasures in the UC libraries’ historic and special collections. For books protected by copyright, users will just get basic background (such as the book’s title and the author’s name), at most a few lines of text related to their search, and information about where they can buy or borrow a book.

John Oakley, Chair of UC’s systemwide Academic Senate and professor of law at UC Davis, says it best: "The academic enterprise is fundamentally about discovery. We contribute to it immeasurably by unlocking the wealth of information maintained within our libraries and exposing it to the latest that search technologies have to offer."

The University of California becomes the latest partner in the Google Books Library Project, which also includes the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University and the New York Public Library. Google is also conducting a pilot project with the Library of Congress.

The Google Books Library Project digitizes books from major libraries around the world and makes their collections searchable on Google Book Search. More information can be found at: books.google.com.

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