Tech Shout!

Software giant, Microsoft has plans of unveiling an online library dubbed Live Search Books. The Redmond-based company hopes that their online library will compete with Google’s Book Search Project that was initiated in 2004.

According to Microsoft, the first steps of setting up an online library include a U.S test of Live Search Books, that will feature thousands of out-of-copyright books, including works held by the British library and major universities in Toronto and California.

“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,” project director Cliff Guren wrote in a weblog entry posted on the Microsoft website.

In fact, rival Google restarted its Google Book Search project in August this year. After publishing houses and authors raised a hue and cry about the issue, Google modified its online library to offer only summaries of copyrighted works along with information regarding where to buy or borrow such books.

The search engine giant has now aimed to scan every literary work into digital format and then making them available online. Google has also formed partnerships with universities such as Oxford, Harvard, the New York Public Library, Complutense of Madrid and the University of California.

But Microsoft said that its Windows Live Publisher program was devoted to obtaining the rights to digitize copyrighted books. Opposition to the project, particularly by French and US editors, resulted in a group of book publishers forming the Open Content Alliance (OCA) in October of 2005. The OCA is a non-profit organization which joins together an array of universities, foundations, and data processors to create a “common pot” of digitized books available online for download or printing.

“The question is whether the knowledge of the world will be property of a private company or open to all,” OCA founder Brewster Kahle said earlier this year. “Google thinks public is private. Everybody can make money out of it.”

The OCA got the support of Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo, which was to tailor a search engine for the alliance and finance converting 18,000 books to digital format.

Microsoft has promised to contribute 150,000 digitized books to the OCA collection. The OCA hoped to recruit the National Library of France, where 90,000 books have already been scanned. Neither Google nor Microsoft would reveal how many books they have already scanned.