[Web4lib] Query: union search for online books

[Henry Gladney]

In recent years several giant digitizations of (mostly) out-of-copyright
books have been mounted, some by commercial enterprises and some by academic
institutions.  My relatively cursory Google search has not led me to a Web
service from which one can mount a search that inspects a large fraction of
these to determine whether or not a book (or a scholarly article) is
available in digital form.  (I am aware of Google Book Search (see
http://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/about.html ) but currently
believe its scope to be limited.)

I wonder, has the kind of service been programmed and made available?  (I
believe that providing it would be a relatively straightforward programming
task.  If not, perhaps some list member will take it on.)   If you know of
an example, I would be grateful for a pointer to it.  I suspect that other
members of this distribution list would be as interested as I am.

Best wishes, Henry

H.M. Gladney, Ph.D.     HMG Consulting http://home.pacbell.net/hgladney/
(408)867-5454