Microsoft adds books to Live Search

By Stephen Withers
Monday, 04 June 2007 08:29

Home IT

Microsoft's Live Search now includes full-text searching of in-copyright books from a range of publishers.

Live Search Books (in beta) carries out a full-text search and generates a results list showing title, author, year of publication and a snippet containing the search terms.

Hovering over one of these entries brings up a pane containing cover art, additional publication details and a summary of the book, along with a graphical indication of where the search terms are located. If they are in one or more clusters, it's likely that there is a substantial amount of relevant material rather than just a passing reference.

In most cases, the publishers have given permission for Live Search Books to display a limited number of pages from each book, typically between 10 and 35 percent of the entire contents. However, this requires users to sign in with a Windows Live ID, MSN Messenger or Microsoft Passport account.

Live Search Books also provides links to online booksellers and where appropriate to the publisher's own ecommerce site.

"We have paid particular attention to ensuring that we are only including books in our index that our publishing partners have given us permission to include, so our customers and partners can feel secure in our stance on copyright protection," said Cliff Guren, director of publisher evangelism within the Live Search selection team.

Participating publishers include Cambridge University Press, Harvard University Press, John Wiley & Sons Publishing, McGraw-Hill Companies, Microsoft Corporation, MIT Press, OECD, Oxford University Press, Pearson Education, Simon & Schuster, Springer, and Yale University Press.