University of Wisconsin libraries are going digital, and Google is there to help.

As part of an agreement announced Thursday with the nation's leading Internet search engine, more than 7.2 million books and documents housed at UW libraries and the Wisconsin Historical Society will be digitized and made searchable on Google Book Search.

"Wisconsin has been involved in creating a digital library for the past six years," said Edward Van Gemert, acting director of UW libraries. "The Google project extends that at a pace … so much faster than what we've been able to do."

The Google feature allows users to gain access to the collections of eight international libraries, as well as digitized materials directly from publishers.

Though some critics have likened Google Book Search to controversial file-sharing networks such as Napster, both Van Gemert and Google spokesperson Megan Lamb said the comparison is inaccurate.

"We're not giving away any books for free," Lamb said, "unless they are in the public domain, free of copyright."

The difference, Lamb added, is that while illegal file-sharing networks provide access to copyrighted materials for free, Google Book Search merely locates copyrighted materials and only allows access to them at a cost.

Utilizing the same technology as Google's main search engine, Lamb said Google Book Search allows users to locate specific materials among millions by simply searching for a particular phrase or topic.

"Our goal is to help users find more and more books," Lamb said. "We want to work with the University of Wisconsin libraries to use their books in the program."

Ranked No. 11 in North America by the Association of Research Libraries, the combined library collections of UW and the Wisconsin Historical Society comprise one of the largest collections of documents and historical materials in the nation.

UW joins seven other international libraries — including Harvard, Michigan and Oxford — in working with Google to digitalize portions of their collections.

"I think what it does, actually, is it opens up the availability and the opportunity to have access to more resources that will be available to more people," Interim Dean of Students Lori Berquam said. "And it saves the wear and tear on the books."