Starting yesterday, everyone can go to Google Book Search and download full digital copies of out-of-copyright books to read at your own pace. You’re free to choose from a diverse collection of public domain titles — from well-known classics to obscure gems, Adam Mathes blogs from Google.

With the help of Google’s library partners, Google can provide PDF downloads of such books now. Google works in partnership with University of California, Harvard University, University of Michigan, The New York Public Library, Oxford University and Stanford University.

To find public domain books, select the “Full view” radio button when you search on Google Book. An icon below the thumbnail of the page allows you to click and download PDF.

The first page of the book include “Usage guidelines” and other information. Downloaded books also include Google’s watermark logo (”digitized by Google”) on the bottom right hand corner of every page.

Although the quality of the book is acceptable, I find them hard to use because they are not searchable.

I am not a lawyer, but I suppose a public domain book is public domain.

If that is the case, it is an ecstatic news for web publishers. Now we can repurposes old content for our sites.

So there, find the content that would enhance your site visitor experience and see both repeat and new traffic stream to your site.