A whole new meaning for the verb "to Google[R]".

Google, the online search gizmo that became a verb, announced a plan in December 2004 to scan the books from the collections of five major libraries and to make their contents available to nearly anyone in the world with a mouse and an Internet connection.

Imagine. The libraries of Harvard and Stanford universities, the universities of Michigan and Oxford and The New York Public Library, all on your desktop.

"Even before we started Google, we dreamed of making the incredible breadth of information that librarians so lovingly organize searchable online," Larry Page, Google Inc. cofounder and president of Products, said at the time. Page cofounded Google in 1998 with his Stanford classmate Sergey Brin.

The new undertaking is an expansion of the Google Print program, which assists publishers in making books and other offline information searchable online. Google is now working with libraries to digitally scan books from their collections, and over time will integrate this content into the Google index, to make it searchable for users worldwide.

Advantages being touted for the system are that authors and publishers can expect increased visibility and sales for their books. Users will gain the ability to search across library collections, including out-of-print books and titles at remote institutions. These could be tremendous breakthroughs for isolated African American scholars.

Some scholars, notably Michael Gorman, dean of Library Services at Cal State Fresno and president-elect of the American Library Association, have cast doubt on whether the plan will be as ultimately useful as Google claims.

Search results on Google will show relevant book links. For copyrighted works, links will lead to brief excerpts or bibliographic data. For works in the public domain, users will get to browse full texts.

For more information, see http://print.google.com/googleprint/library.html.

Angela P. Dodson: E-mail your news to [e-mail]