Google’s Stock Jumps on Library-Book Plan

Shares of Google Inc. jumped nearly 5% on Tuesday after the search-engine company announced ambitious plans to digitize books in some of the world’s most important libraries.

The effort, an expansion of the company’s Google Print program, involves scanning millions of books from Stanford University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Oxford University and the New York Public Library. Once the books are digitized, Google could profit by attracting more viewers -- and ads -- to its site.

Shares of the Mountain View, Calif., company rose $8.24, or 4.8%, to $178.69 on Nasdaq.

The payoff will come, analysts said, if Web searchers are drawn to Google because it is perceived to have more information than rival search sites.

“It’s too early to tell how well they will monetize this, but already it generates lots of great feelings about the company,” said Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li. “They could certainly get more users out of this, and the more users, the more advertising.”

Google said it would finance the roughly decade-long project, but declined to say how much it would cost. The company will scan the books at each of the partner libraries using its own technology and people.

Librarians and nonprofits already involved in scanning books for other projects say it costs about $20 to do a 300-page book, but that the cost should soon fall to about $10 per book.

Nonprofit efforts such as Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive have been placing public-domain materials online for years; the Google initiative includes copyrighted works as well. Though searchers will have full access to books in the public domain, only excerpts of copyrighted material will be available.

Google said it had no plans to display ads next to search results from library books, but it would show links to booksellers and local libraries. Nearly all of Google’s revenue comes from ads.