One of the powers of full text, even if you don’t present it to users, is that you can build some interesting things on the data analysis. One such tool is mapping of place names in the works. I believe I’ve previously blogged it but one example is Gutenkarte which maps locations in texts available from Project Gutenberg.

Well it appears Google is finally integrating maps in with their Google Book search. An example is the Illustrated New York. This one happens to be available for free but it could also be done for books in copyright. It at least tells you what areas are mentioned and lets you discover things. It will be interesting to see if they provide a map/location interface to find books with.

Google has more information on their Book Search Blog.