Google's controversial project aimed at scanning and indexing the content of millions of books went live today with a long list of books that are old enough to not be covered by copyright laws. The move is likely reflective of ongoing battles between Google and publishing groups that claim the new initiative amounts of copyright infringement.

From the BBC:

The search giant said the first focus of the digitisation plan would be books in the public domain, so-called orphaned works and titles that have gone out of print.

Eventually Google hopes the collection of works it will put online will dwarf this first group of works.

The plan to put books online was unveiled a year ago but has run into legal challenges that temporarily halted the systematic scanning operation.

Internet users have long had the option of reading books online that have already entered the public domain. I remember taking advantage of this when I was an English major at Ohio State. I'd often download the classics rather than going out and buying yet another paperback to lug around.

From the Google Print site:

Just do a search on the Google Print homepage. When we find a book whose content contains a match for your search terms, we'll link to it in your search results. Click a book title and you'll see the page of the book that has your search terms, along with other information about the book and "Buy this Book" links to online bookstores (you can view the entirety of public domain books or, for books under copyright, just a few pages or in some cases, only the title’s bibliographic data and brief snippets). You can also search for more information within that specific book and find nearby libraries that have it.

Of course much of how Google is able to move forward on the project will depend on how their legal issues turn out. The US Authors Guild along with five major publishers have already gone to court to try to keep Google from scanning their work. At the same time, Google is facing what could be stiff competition from the Open Content Alliance, a project backed up by Yahoo!, Microsoft and the Internet Archive.