Librarians who are against the Google Book Project may not find this useful. But for those who have embraced the new web, the Google Book Search API is certainly a welcome development. What can the Google Book Search API do? It lets you put a link in your library catalog entries that points to an item’s information in Google Book Search.And why would you want to point your users to the Google Book Search portal? To let your users preview the book no matter where the users are currently located while browsing your catalog. Of course, there’s a prerequisition here that libraries who want to use the API must have their library catalogs on the web already.

To see the Google Book Search API in action, check out this list of libraries who have implemented the API in their library catalog:

At a local public library:

• Ann Arbor District Library (Michigan)
• Deschutes Public Library (Oregon)

While searching the catalog of a university library:

• Kansas State University*
• Northwestern University
• Plymouth State University** (New Hampshire)
• University of California
• University of Huddersfield (Huddersfield, UK)
• University of Iowa*
• University of Texas at Austin
• Waterford Institute of Technology (Waterford, Ireland)
• Università degli Studi di Padova * (Padova, Italy)

Or while investigating books on your favorite online library cataloging resource:

• LibraryThing
• Open Library
• Scriblio

And here’s an example of the Google Book Search API in action. Sample entry from Scriblio.