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Thursday 7th December 2006

Microsoft uncovers Live Book Search 5:54PM, Thursday 7th December 2006

Microsoft is going beta - in the US only, at the moment - with its book search project. This involves the online searching of historical books, all of which are out of copyright, that have previously been digitised by academic institutions, including the British Library and the University of Toronto.

Live Search Books, as the service is known, can be found at http://books.live.com. And you can read more about Live Book Search at the Live Search's WebLog.

'The US beta launch of Live Search Books is a big step forward in advancing the way people discover information through the integration of content that has been "off-limits" to the traditional Search experience, until now,' said Cliff Guren, Director of Publisher Evangelism

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at Microsoft. 'There is a lot of trusted and authoritative content that can only be found in books today. With this beta launch we've taken our first steps toward making that content discoverable and easy to read.'

Microsoft is currently working with the British Library to digitise 100,000 books - approximately 12 million pages - and make them available online as part of the service.

For its part, the British Library told us that it is still in the early stages of its work, evaluating the pilot implementation. It hopes to step up the digitisation process early in 2007.

The joint initiative between Microsoft and the British library was first announced back in November 2005.

Google, unsurprisingly, has also been busy in this area. Its work, however, has come under widespread legal attack, on grounds of breaching copyright. You can find Google Book Search here.

Alun Williams

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