In the article Scan This Book! The New York Times Magazine section takes a look at the book scannng, index and retrieval projects underway to create the universal digital library (needing a mere 50 petabyte hard disks). While it has been the tussle between Google and book publishers that has made headlines, there is more at stake:

The idea is to seed the bookless developing world with easily available texts. Superstar sells copies of books it scans back to the same university libraries it scans from. A university can expand a typical 60,000-volume library into a 1.3 million-volume one overnight. At about 50 cents per digital book acquired, it's a cheap way for a library to increase its collection.

The article continues, looking at the genesis of and issues around Google Print.