Google Expands Book Search Service

Google announced Thursday the first expansion of its Google Print library service, but the books included will mostly be in the public domain due to several outstanding lawsuits from publishers and authors over copyright infringement.

10,000 works will initially be available for viewing. Some examples include Henry James' "Daisy Miller," government documents from 1888, and a book about Rhode Island volunteers in the Civil War.

Users will be able to search for keywords within the text and even read the books in their entirety from the Google Print Web site. Four libraries are participating in the initiative: Stanford, Havard, the University of Michigan and the New York Public Library.

Only books within the public domain would be posted in their entirety, according to Google. The company said that copyrighted work would only be shown in sections unless Google has received the expressed permission from copyright holder to do otherwise.

"The world's libraries are a tremendous source of knowledge, much of which has never been available online," associate product manager at Google Adam Mathes said. "One of our goals for Google Print is to change that."

Mathes did not say whether -- or when -- the full texts of copyrighted materials would make it onto the service, although snippets of these books are already available in searches. Google has set up a system where publishers can opt-in and out of Google Print, but has not said which publishers or authors have agreed to participate.