As part of Google's recent search improvements, [Google Book Search][1] is now offering results from books that haven't yet been digitized. The new content means that in addition to the millions of digitized, searchable books in the index, bookworms now have access to millions more.

The new results show up inline with the old digitized results and clicking thorough to the "About This Book" page will list, if available, a summary, links to reviews of the book and, most notably, links to find the book via your local library.

The libraries portion of the results will hand you off to WorldCat, a library catalogue search engine. WorldCat will show nearby libraries that stock the book you're after, though, since not all libraries participate in WorldCat, you results may vary somewhat depending on your location.

WorldCat does a pretty good job of guessing your location (presumably based on IP address), but you can always enter a different address.

Google Book Search also provides links to purchase books through Amazon and other online retailers.

Not all the books will have review links or references, but where possible the new features allow you to get a pretty good idea of whether or not a book is relevant to what you're after.

Here's a couple of samples searches: [<cite>Austerlitz</cite> by W.G. Sebald][2] which shows the summary features and [Frank Stanford's <cite>The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You</cite>][3], which is slightly more obscure and hence shows a less informative results page.

One curious thing in these results, Sebald, the author of <cite>Austerlitz</cite>, died in car accident in 2001 yet Google Book Search lists him as still being alive -- nothing is perfect I suppose.

In addition to the new non-digitized content, Google Book Search has also announced that it has signed on its first French-language library for its book search project. The Cantonal and University Library of Lausanne, Switzerland, will open its stacks to Google and make much of its extensive catalogue available -- including books by prominent French authors like Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac.

[1]: http://books.google.com/ "Google Book Search"
[2]: http://books.google.com/books?id=cMt4AAAACAAJ&dq=Austerlitz "Austerlitz By Sebald, Winfried Georg"
[3]: http://books.google.com/books?id=oPIIAAAACAAJ&dq=The+Battlefield+Where+The+Moon+Says+I+Love+You "The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You By Frank Stanford"