Ooooh, books on cats...
Here is the one I found:
The Rubáíyat of a Persian Kitten
and I can see the whole thing. This really is quite a clever and humorous little book.
I found myself a little bit disappointed to be reading digitally, as there is something uniquely special about holding the actual book in your hands, perhaps having to do with the spirit of the object, but then again I'd likely never get the opportunity to handle the book anyhow and seeing inside is better than nothing. I don't, however, believe that the illustrations scanned in very well. Perhaps that will improve with technology.
In addition, if I found something through my Google search too great to miss in person, then I could plan a special trip to wherever the book was housed or perhaps buy it if a copy were available.
For libraries, I believe this will be a valuable searching tool for patrons and for collection development.
Finally, I don't have copyright concerns about this project. From what I read about the lawsuit and Google Books itself, Google is obeying copyright law. Secondly, even though I obey copyright laws as they stand today myself, this is a subject of great concern to me. I would like to see things changed or at least better thought out. There is an mixed-reviewed book on this subject that I find interesting. It is called Copyrights and copywrongs : the rise of intellectual property and how it threatens creativity by Siva Vaidhyanathan . It is available via Google Book Search with a limited preview, so I invite you to take a look.
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