Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search and Google Print) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database.〔
The basic Google book link is found at https://books.google.com/. The "advanced" interface allowing more specific searches is found at https://books.google.com/advanced_book_search〕 Books are provided either by publishers and authors, through the Google Books Partner Program, or by Google's library partners, through the Library Project.〔 Additionally, Google has partnered with a number of magazine publishers to digitize their archives.
The Publisher Program was first known as 'Google Print' when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004. The Google Books Library Project, which scans works in the collections library partners and adds them to the digital inventory, was announced in December 2004.
The Google Books initiative has been hailed for its potential to offer unprecedented access to what may become the largest online body of human knowledge and promoting the democratization of knowledge.〔(Malte Herwig, "Google's Total Library", ''Spiegel Online International'', Mar. 28, 2007. )〕
But it has also been criticized for potential copyright violations,〔〔 and lack of editing to correct the many errors introduced into the scanned texts by the OCR process.
As of October 2015, the number of scanned book titles was over 25 million, but the scanning process has slowed down in American academic libraries.〔http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/arts/international/google-books-a-complex-and-controversial-experiment.html?_r=0〕〔http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/what-ever-happened-to-google-books〕 Google estimated in 2010 that there were about 130 million distinct titles in the world,〔(Google: 129 Million Different Books Have Been Published ) PC World〕 and stated that it intended to scan all of them by the end of the 2000s.〔
Results from Google Books show up in both the universal Google Search as well as in the dedicated Google Books search website (''books.google.com'').
In response to search queries, Google Books allows users to view full pages from books in which the search terms appear, if the book is out of copyright or if the copyright owner has given permission. If Google believes the book is still under copyright, a user sees "snippets" of text around the queried search terms. All instances of the search terms in the book text appear with a yellow highlight.
The four access levels used on Google Books are:
*Full view: Books in the public domain are available for "full view" and can be downloaded for free. In-print books acquired through the Partner Program are also available for full view if the publisher has given permission, although this is rare.
*Preview: For in-print books where permission has been granted, the number of viewable pages is limited to a "preview" set by a variety of access restrictions and security measures, some based on user-tracking. Usually, the publisher can set the percentage of the book available for preview. Users are restricted from copying, downloading or printing book previews. A watermark reading "Copyrighted material" appears at the bottom of pages. All books acquired through the Partner Program are available for preview.
*Snippet view: A 'snippet view' – two to three lines of text surrounding the queried search term – is displayed in cases where Google does not have permission of the copyright owner to display a preview. This could be because Google cannot identify the owner or the owner declined permission. If a search term appears many times in a book, Google displays no more than three snippets, thus preventing the user from viewing too much of the book. Also, Google does not display any snippets for certain reference books, such as dictionaries, where the display of even snippets can harm the market for the work. Google maintains that no permission is required under copyright law to display the snippet view.〔
*No preview: Google also displays search results for books that have not been digitized. As these books have not been scanned, their text is not searchable and only the metadata information such as the title, author, publisher, number of pages, ISBN, subject and copyright information, and in some cases, a table of contents and book summary is available. In effect, this is similar to an online library card catalog.〔
In response to criticism from groups such as the American Association of Publishers and the Authors Guild, Google announced an opt-out policy in August 2005, through which copyright owners could provide a list of titles that it did not want scanned, and Google would respect the request. Google also stated that it would not scan any in-copyright books between August and 1 November 2005, to provide the owners with the opportunity to decide which books to exclude from the Project. Thus, Google provides a copyright owner with three choices with respect to any work:〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Google Library Project: Both Sides of the Story )〕
#It can participate in the Partner Program to make a book available for preview or full view, in which case it would share revenue derived from the display of pages from the work in response to user queries.
#It can let Google scan the book under the Library Project and display snippets in response to user queries.
#It can opt out of the Library Project, in which case Google will not scan the book. If the book has already been scanned, Google will reset its access level as 'No preview'.
Each book on Google Books has an associated "About this book" page which displays useful analytical information regarding the book such as a word map of the most used words and phrases, a selection of pages, list of related books, list of other books and scholarly articles that cite the book, and tables of content. This information is collated through automated methods, and sometimes data from third-party sources is used. This information provides an insight into the book, particularly useful when only a snippet view is available. The list of related books can often contain irrelevant entries. In some cases, a book summary and information about the author is also displayed. The page also displays bibliographic information, which can be exported as citations in BibTeX, EndNote and RefMan formats. Registered users logged in with their Google accounts can post reviews for books on this page. Google Books also displays reviews from Goodreads alongside these reviews.〔
Most scanned works are no longer in print or commercially available. For those which are, the site provides links to the website of the publisher and booksellers.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』