While requiring Google to ask permission may sound reasonable, the reality is that such a process is practically impossible. First of all, there is no easy way to determine whether the older post-1923 books are still under protection. The old law required the owners to obtain extensions on their copyrights. However, determining whether this was ever done is the kind of search you hire lawyers to conduct. It can be time-consuming and expensive. And this is the easy part. If the copyright was extended, how do you go about asking the copyright holder's permission? If the copyright was renewed in 1955, you may be able to find who held it and where that person lived in 1955, but where are they now? An author-copyright holder may have died years ago. Who inherited those rights? A corporate copyright holder may have gone out of business. Their places of residence as shown on their copyright forms may have been razed by bulldozers years ago, their telephones long since disconnected. How do you find this person? Then, multiply this problem by millions and millions of books. How can Google possibly ask for permission to scan these books?

We will get back to these legal and ethical considerations in a moment, but first, let's take a look at Google Book Search itself. Is it worth all the fuss? While Google Book Search is still in its infancy, it is now 18 months in the making, and we can already get a decent look at what it is, and what it has the potential to be. It is an eye-opener. However, it left us with one question: what is all the controversy about?

After you have read this article (no sooner), go to Google Book Search and try it out (we'll provide a link). Here is what we found. First of all, you get to choose to search either "all books" or "full view books." The full view books are wonderful. You can read every word. The rest are hit or miss, frustrating, and almost as much a hindrance to research as help. Publishers may object that Google is giving away too much of their copyrighted material, but the practical reality is they give you too little. In some cases, with publisher's approval, they give you a "limited preview." This is a real hit or miss scenario. Some pages are displayed, others aren't. If what you want to see is on the pages Google displays, the resource is helpful. If not, you see nothing, and have no idea whether the book provides useful information on your topic. Google guides you to booksellers and libraries where you can obtain the book, but there is no way to tell whether the information it contains is worth the effort or expense.

In other cases, Google gives you a "snippet." The three or four lines of text they provide are too little to discern whether the resource is useful to you. Finally, there are some books where all Google tells you is that your search term is somewhere in the text. Not even a "snippet" is provided.