I think the Google Book initiative is great. I'm no conspiracy theorist but It seems the biggest problem with this type of service is verifiability. If Google h

I think the Google Book initiative is great. I'm no conspiracy theorist but It seems the biggest problem with this type of service is verifiability. If Google has digitally transcribed some very rare work that is later destroyed it will be hard to trust Google's digital copy of the work for real accuracy when we have no other copy to compare against. Someone could create a mirror but that does no good if the mirror is created after the digital copy has been tampered with. I think Google needs to work on adding something to increase the trustworthiness of the works they store. Maybe it is a publicly released checksum of the works that is created when they are scanned and stored by a separate entity or maybe there is some other very clever method. I just know that I would be hesitant to take a single corporate entities word on the veracity of their copy of a public document.