As if Google Books weren't enough, online learners may soon have another virtual bookshelf. The Open Content Alliance is currently scanning public domain books from several dozen libraries and Boston Library is next on the list.

Here's what Wired Campus has to say about the book scanning venture:

"The alliance was created in 2005 by Mr. Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, who has criticized Google's digitizing project for scanning snippets of copyrighted texts and for tying material to its own search engine. Books scanned by the Open Content Alliance are public-domain texts that can be scanned in full and indexed by every search engine."

Soon, web users will be able to locate copies of public domain books via any search engine.