I love google books. As I tend to be a serial faddist, I find can read plenty about whatever subject happens to be top the list of current interests. For example, I've recently been reading a wonderful book, Voyages of Delusion, on the search for the North West Passage. With Google books I can go and read some of the original accounts that are referred to - because they are out of copyright, the full text is there, as much as I can be bothered to sit and read.
For stuff that is in copyright, I still find it useful. We're researching the Camino di Santiago as a possible future adventure, I can read sizeable chunks of the considerable range of texts on the topic.
As a consumer I think its great. I think unlocking that material is brilliant - all that long tail of content that otherwise would be mouldering away somewhere. If I was a publisher I might have a different view. As a librarian, I think it shows us what is possible. Now if we could get a good e-paper ebook reader that could easily download the stuff from google books, we'd definitely be getting somewhere.
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You make a good point about primary material, Gary. This would make Google Books a particularly useful service for history students; without works written at the time they're researching, they can't hope to draw conclusions about the period with any sense of validity.
Where would scholars be without the (sometimes odious) accounts of Samuel Pepys, for example?
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