Googletastic

The Google Books initiative is very interesting from a library perspective.

Pros:

• Convenient, 24/7 access (don't have to wait for someone to return items, no overdue fees etc)
• Many books from the 'canon' are available in full text -- good for secondary students studying Shakespeare, for instance
• Have many more books at your disposal from impressive collections worldwide... negates some of the need for Interlibrary loan?
• As others have said, the search is a full text search, so topics which may not be included in Subject Headings will be picked up -- good for ephemeral information

Cons:

• People may not visit libraries as much even though they are using library collections (I guess this is still 'visiting', however -- just in a virtual rather than physical sense)
• Like Aqua, I'm worried about the charging issue. I guess for academic libraries, this is simply another type of subscription which can be funded by student fees and library budgets. But what about public libraries???
• Searching -- no Subject Headings, so potentially lots of irrelavant hits if doing a keyword search

Library thing is *so cool!* I'm always looking for new things to read, so by examining the libraries of people who have similar items to you, the chances are that you'll find new things you like :)

I can definitely see this being useful in academic libraries. For instance, students working on similar assignments (or even students doing group work) could examine each others' lists to see what materials are useful. I guess librarians could also use it to share good teaching materials (although a lot of good stuff is available online, so maybe Delicious would be more appropriate for this...)

I created an account and added the book I'm currently reading -- White Teeth by Zadie Smith.

Cheers,

Kate