Holy Smokin Moley! Pardon my ignorance, (and maybe all my posts need to begin this way), but I just found Google’s Book Search, a prodigious online tool that allows you to read whole entire books online for free. How cool is that!

So they say on their website (and I’ve bolded the text that you should read while imagining my jaw drop):

If the book is out of copyright, or the publisher has given us permission, you'll be able to see a preview of the book, and in some cases the entire text. If it's in the public domain, you're free to download a PDF copy.

We've created reference pages for every book so you can quickly find all kinds of relevant information: book reviews, web references, maps and more.

If you find a book you like, click on the "Buy this book" and "Borrow this book" links to see where you can buy or borrow it.

Where do the books come from? Currently, we are connecting readers with books in two ways: the Partner Program and the Library Project.

My mind is running amok, like a mad bull in a china shop. This new information calls for a lot of changes to my otherwise unvarying online routine. I can already see it transforming my blog in so many ways. I am also thinking about how this is changing the literary business and what kind of challenges an all-encompassing online corpus such as this will face. I am obviously gravitating towards comparing it with online video libraries and the youtubes of the world, but that is a whole different monster.

I am (as expected) exploring other digital libraries that offer the same service. There are some that I have been (vaguely) aware of that suddenly look very appealing: Questia, Amazon’s Search Inside, iRead.

But I can’t even begin to fathom this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_digital_library_projects