Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2006 22:28:36 +0530
From: praveen kumar veeramalla
*Microsoft debuts book search tool*
*Anyone wanting to view an obscure tome from the vaults of the British
Library will be able to look for it online from Thursday. *
Microsoft is releasing its Live Search Books, a rival to Google's Book
Search, in test, or beta, version in the US.
The digital archive will include books from the collections of the British
Library, the University of California and the University of Toronto.
Books from three other institutions will be added in January 2007.
*Search full text *
All the books currently included in the project will be non-copyrighted but
later it will also add copyrighted work that publishers have given
permission to include in the project.
"We feel very strongly about copyright. We don't do any mass scanning of
in-copyright works," said Danielle Tiedt, the general manager of Live Search
Selection for Microsoft.
Initially the database of available books will be searchable from the book
search engine's home page or as a category on the main Windows Live Search
page.
Later Microsoft plans to integrate all the books scanned into its general
search engine.
"What we are focusing more of our efforts on for live searching is
integrating all of those content types together to give you the most
relevant results. If, for example, it's a search on historical content,
chance are the most authoritative content may be found in a books search,"
said Ms Tiedt.
The system has a feature called "search inside a book" which will allow
users to search the full text of books.
"We've focused on making the search experience really impactful...People
will have full access to all of the text," said Ms Tiedt.
A separate global digital library plan by Google is also under way.
The search giant is spending $200m (�110m) to create a digital archive of
millions of books from four top US libraries. It is also digitising
out-of-copyright books from the UK's Oxford University.
In contrast to Microsoft Google's plans include adding both copyright and
non-copyright books from participating institutions.
Although only copyrighted books will be available to view in full text, its
project has come under fire from the Association of American Publishers and
the Authors Guild
Source:BBC News 06/12/2006
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praveen kumar veeramalla ,
Library,National Remote Sensing Agency.
Hyderabad
