Microsoft launches Live Search Books website (original) (raw)

Back in October 2005, Microsoft announced that it was starting a new service deemed MSN Book Search. The concept behind the program was that the company and its partners would scan books into the system and then allow users to search the books' contents via a Microsoft search engine. In May, the service was rebranded as Windows Live Book Search. Since then, Microsoft has added several big name partners to the project including the University of California, the New York Public Library, the British Library, Cornell University, and Kirtas Technologies—all of whom have helped add content to the system. Today, after months of scanning and indexing, Microsoft finally released the service to the public under the name Live Search Books.

Upon navigating to the site, you aren't greeted with much except a message telling you to enter keywords to begin. Keywords can include both book excerpts and titles. After entering some terms that came up empty, I finally (kind of) struck gold with the phrase, "Call me Ahab", which is actually a quote from the book Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, not Moby-Dick. Surprisingly, Moby-Dick was still the first hit in a total of 56 results. Upon clicking the title of the novel, I was greeted with a pleasant, two-pane interface that displays excerpts on the left and scans from the book on the right. Besides being able to navigate through content, I was also able to search inside the book and download it in PDF format. The text in the PDFs is relatively clear, but the background of the pages may differ in quality depending on the condition of the book itself.