• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, November 3, 2005

Google this morning opened its impressive virtual library, a searchable database of out-of-copyright books from universities. At launch, the collection includes history books about the U.S. Civil War from the University of Michigan; writings by Henry James from Harvard; government documents from Stanford; and biographies from the New York Public Library.

The books are searchable and, says Google, users can browse every page and save individual pages. Because the books were scanned in, users can also view the covers and illustrations online.

The project has already created a trove of new Google inventory. A query at Google Print Thursday morning on the term "civil war" returned not just a list of books about the U.S. Civil War, but also returned eight sponsored links, from retailers as diverse as Shopping.com (which is advertising Civil War Clothing) to memorabilia marketer Ruby Lane. By contrast, the same query at Google's Web search engine returned just two sponsored links.

But the project has also embroiled Google in controversy. While the books that Google made available online today are all in the public domain, the company's project extends to books that are under copyright. Google has said it plans to make short snippets of those books available online, which prompted two lawsuits claiming that the project violates copyright law.

Google counters that it's just making information about the books easily accessible, which not only is allowed under copyright law, but would help publishers because it would encourage consumers to purchase the books.

Meantime, while everyone is waiting for the argument to play out in court, it appeared that Google Print was hit with a denial of service attack almost as soon as it went live. Thursday morning, some users attempting to access the page were met with a request to type in characters--a task that automated programs can't complete--because a virus or spyware application was sending Google Print automated requests.