Microsoft Announces Book Search Engine

Microsoft has launched a new book search engine, Live Search Books Beta, to offer a vertical search tool for scanned publications. In the initial phase, the Live Search Books database will be searchable from the book search engine's home page, or as a category on the main Windows Live Search page. When the tool is released out of beta, in the next six months, it will incorporate all of the scanned publications into its general Internet search engine.

Microsoft says, Live Search Books is an attempt to focus on integrating all content types into Live Search, to provide users with the most relevant results.

The "Search inside a book" feature of Live Search Books allows users to search the full texts of scanned books. However, the beta version of Live Search Books includes only non copyright books, scanned from the collections of the British Library, the University of California and the University of Toronto. Microsoft also plans to add books from the New York Public Library, Cornell University and the American Museum of Veterinary Medicine in January 2007.

Microsoft has currently restricted its book scanning project to non-copyright books; with publishers having the option to opt-in, if they want in-copyright publications to be scanned for the project. All books on Microsoft Live Search Books will be in PDF files for the full text, just like Google’s Book Search service.

Microsoft has also announced that it has added medical content to its Windows Live Academic Search. The addition of medicine as a category will is aimed at increasing the amount of available searchable content.

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