Google Book Search is a boon for scholars of the 19th Century

Tim O'Reilly has an interesting post on the way that Google Book Search is transforming scholarship.

Google will have to settle its fights with copyright holders. But no one should doubt that the way it is building a global electronic library system can lead to extraordinary richness and access to wisdom. The Google Book Search system will get better -- inexorably and rapidly as more content is added and as the functionality of the software improves. Publishers and librarians will have to match and complement the depth of the vision or they will be left behind.