Google’s plan to digitally scan books so that users can access them from its Internet search engine is being greeted with delight at the tiny library in my hometown of Half Moon Bay, Calif.Google said Tuesday that it is working with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the University of Oxford as well as The New York Public Library to scan books from their collections.You might think some libraries would feel threatened at the prospect of virtual books. You would be wrong. At Half Moon Bay Public Library, Manager Maya Kennedy said the plan offers a potentially great service for her readers. Half Moon Bay Public Library has struggled valiantly to serve its community in the face of overcrowding and underfunding. And with fewer than 70,000 items, including books, CDs and periodicals, Half Moon Bay is simply too small to provide a comprehensive collection.“There’s no way we can hold all the products users would need,” she said. “This could be very exciting to have greater access to these libraries, certainly more than we could ever have at our small library. People could eventually be able to access this from their homes, work and from the libraries.”Half Moon Bay is not alone. A $350 million bond issue to fund new library construction across the state prompted scores of community libraries to come forward to ask for help. Only a fraction succeeded in obtaining funding. In comparison, Google is offering to put technology to use in a truly transformative way.The announcement expands the Google Print program, which assists publishers in making books and other offline information searchable online. For more information and examples, please visit http://print.google.com/googleprint/library.html. “Even before we started Google, we dreamed of making the incredible breadth of information that librarians so lovingly organize searchable online,” Larry Page, Google co-founder and president of Products, said in a statement. “Today we’re pleased to announce this program to digitize the collections of these amazing libraries so that every Google user can search them instantly.” Software Development