Thing 9 - Google Books

Browsing around Google Books I found this statement of their mission:
'Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful'. They also pay tribute to the libraries who have preserved the books and partnered with them to make the works accessible.

After getting over the little frisson of resentment and fear (hang on ... weren't we supposed to be the ones organising the world's information, making it accessible and useful?) caused by their mission statement I found I liked this tool. You might still have to go to your library to read the entire work not to mention filtering out the irrelevant and tangential 'possibilities' provided (always the issue of information overload ...) but the 'snippets' of in-copyright books are a helpful and time-saving way of filtering for usefulness and the searchability of the text is great.