Yesterday Google Book Search took its digitization project one step farther, allowing readers to download and print PDF versions of books in the public domain. Computerworld plays up the copyright questions and the ability to print, while Google’s book blog positions the initiative as a way to build a library of classic titles–and some obscurities as well. There’s also an interesting suggestion of mobility in Google’s typically low-key link to the new service: the tagline on the search page reads, “Take Shakespeare with you.”

I took a look at Flatland, digitized from Oxford’s Bodleian library. On the Google site, the book appears in a window flanked by a search box and four “buy this book” links. An “About this book” link takes me to a screen with brief bibilographic information, along with links to “related information,” meaning Google searches for information about the book. These searches are pre-constructed for some precision: 17 links to “other web pages related to Flatland by A. Square” (search field: “Flatland, by A. Square”  “Edwin Abbott Abbott”) and 133 links to “web reviews” of the book (search field: review “Flatland, by A. Square”). There’s an algorithm here, of course, and no one should rely on Google to construct intelligent searches for them, but I admire the way Google has tried to point readers in fruitful directions as they explore these books.

The scan of Flatland is clean and quite readable. For those who can tolerate reading from a screen, reading it online works pretty well. Printing out pages on a laser printer reveals more of the usual difficulties with contrast and blurring of letters, but the copy is still quite clean and in my view would be eminently usable for general reading and for use in the classroom.

Would I rather hold a printed volume in my hand and read from it? Certainly. I’ve given up dogearing pages long ago, but I still scribble in the margins, and I still thrill to the sight of book spines ranging across a handsome set of shelves. That said, I’m also mightily intrigued by the flexibility, ease of access, and cost savings represented by Google’s “classic downloads.” I’m also interested in the possibilities of sharing annotations. Imagine a library of these downloads with marginal notations by a) scholars b) general readers c) a classroom of students. Being able to share (indeed, publish) those annotations might also encourage students to be more diligent in their reading, so that they actually do mark the pages (electronically) and leave a trail of their own cognition as they move through a text.

Group annotations? Many possibilities there as well.

Take Shakespeare with you. Take Shakespeare class with you. Take the communal mental activity of many readers with you. Access and share the traces of your own engagement with other engaged readers.

This could be interesting.

UPDATE: Downloaded PDF books begin with a couple of interesting pages from Google regarding usage, copyright, and so forth. I’m most interested in the general description that begins these pages, in words that, for better or worse, carefully express an ethos that will be familiar to most academics. I note that marginalia also figure in Google’s thought, with a little Indiana Jones twist.

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world’s books discoverable online.