Last week, Google Book Search announced a settlement agreement in the suit against it by the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and others.  In addition to paying some $125 million in royalties for "snippets" of copyrighted books it displayed, the agreement makes more books available than ever before.  Though there are critics of the agreement (and of the database in general), for those of us looking for online resources this is another leap forward.

Now, in the case of copyrighted works that are no longer in print, Google will (with permission of the copyright holder) give consumers the option to buy the works.  That means copyrighted books that were out of print and fornerly unavailable will become available once more.

For those unfamiliar with Google Books, it's an amazing database of over 10 million books, mostly in English.  It includes both fiction and non-fiction, many from the 18th and 19th centuries.  It also has magazines available for online browsing, including Life, Yoga Journal, Vegetarian Times, and more.