Google to expand its book searches

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Ben Zimmer, executive producer of a website and software package called the Visual Thesaurus, was seeking the earliest use of the phrase "you're not the boss of me." Using a newspaper database, he found a 1953 reference.

But while using Google's book search recently, he found the phrase in a short story in "The Church," a periodical published in 1883 and scanned from the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

Ever since Google began scanning printed books four years ago, scholars and others with specialized interests have been able to tap a trove of information that had been locked away on the dusty shelves of libraries and in antiquarian bookstores.

According to Dan Clancy, the engineering director for Google book search, every month users view at least 10 pages of more than half of the 1 million out-of-copyright books that Google has scanned into its servers.

Google's book search "allows you to look for things that would be very difficult to search for otherwise," said Zimmer.

A settlement in October with authors and publishers who had brought two copyright lawsuits against Google will make it possible for users to read a far greater collection of books, including many still under copyright protection.

The agreement, pending approval by a judge, also paves the way for both sides to make profits from digital versions of books.

The settlement may give new life to copyrighted out-of-print books in a digital form and allow writers to make money from titles that had been out of commercial circulation for years.