Voyage of the Paradigm Ship

Last week I wrote about WorldCat Mobile. This week, thanks to a post on Andy Ihnatko’s blog, I learned that Google Book Search has gone mobile, too! Point your device’s web browser to http://books.google.com/m, and check it out.

The Book Search home page displays a search box, a “My books,” “Featured books,” and a nicely organized “Browse categories” section. The mobile edition defaults to browse or search the current collection of 1.5 million titles in the public-domain. Copyrighted titles in Google’s hoard can be searched for brief bibliographic information, but unlike the full version of Book Search, no text preview or snippets are available.

Here I selected “Philosophy” from the Browse, and then Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra to give you a view of the reading page. Each reading page actually displays ten pages of the book’s text, which feels a bit long to me, since you can only navigate to the next or previous set of pages by scrolling all the way to the top or bottom of each reading page. There is currently no way to bookmark your text, which can make returning to the place where you left off a bit of a pain. A Table of Contents button, however, helps a bit to zero-in, as does a “Jump to page” box at the bottom of the Contents page. Illustrations are included in the machine read text, and tapping on any paragraph toggles a display of the original book text image for that paragraph. That’s kind of neat.

One major limitation of Google Book Search Mobile compared to other application-based ebook readers on the iPhone/iPod touch, such as eReader or Stanza, is the inability to download books to your device for offline reading. With recent developments in providing offline functionality to Gmail and Google Docs, however, this feature may be coming.

I highlighted the phrase “1.5 million titles” above. But I think it was still too easy for me to type. I’m not sure I can fully grasp the enormity of this level of access, with this much ease, from a mobile device! What does all this mean? I’m not sure. Will Google eventually replace libraries in the content delivery business? Maybe. (I do think libraries and librarians need to be seriously rethinking roles and core competencies right about now.)

Google has long presented itself as a company committed to making profit without resorting to evil (see especially point 6 in Google’s corporate philosophy). Many are still suspicious. Maybe rightfully so. But it’s hard to complain when what Google is providing here is not just cool, it is also very useful. I love the way Andy Ihnatko maneuvers that edge when he writes:

Good golly. If Google is evil, then they’re a Doctor Doom sort of evil. What’s a little evil, when the totalitarian dictator takes such wonderful, indulgent care of his subjects?

Huge, hulking, armed Googlebots may suddenly appear on every street corner one morning but I’ll be inclined to think “Well, yes, that’s annoying, I won’t lie. But I do get to keep Google Books for Mobile, right?”

Okay Google, I’m going to say Mobile Book Search is great! Now, how about a mobile version of Google Scholar?