The amaizing "Google Book Search"

This is spectacular... and I think we're really lucky to witness this moment in the "history of reading"... reading full text books without touching paper...!!!! This experince was already available in restricted websites related to few universities at the US (at Penn we had access to full text books from some time now) but this is clearly a larger and more public project...

So since few weeks the previously announced "Google Book Search" is underway!

Certainly not everything is available yet but many interesting books are already on the web made for free access: For instance I run a search on Tunisia (my home country) and major references (not only the usual absurd touristic guides) came out: Perkins' 2005 History of Modern Tunisia and the interesting book of Gallagher Medicine and Power in Tunisia (2002).

Major refrences are also available like the superb book of Braudel The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philippe II....

And most important of all some interesting books on Islamic art and architecture are available...
Notably many issues of Muqarnas, one of the major journals in the field, are available online (it's true that some are already available in archnet but still...)

It's simply amaizing even though the contreversy still going on between Google and major associations of writers and publishers...