Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Friday, June 09, 2006

Major book-scanning partners for OCA and Microsoft Book Search

Microsoft to Collaborate With University of California and University of Toronto Libraries for Windows Live Book Search, a press release from Microsoft, June 9, 2006. Excerpt:

Microsoft Corp. today announced two key advances in Windows Live(TM) Book Search, a service that will enable Web searchers to find answers from authoritative, trusted book content. The addition of two new participants, the University of California and the University of Toronto libraries, will result in an addition of digitized material, primarily out-of-copyright books, from these two institutions to the Windows Live Book Search service. Also, the recently debuted Windows Live Books Publisher Program enables publishers to submit in-copyright material to become part of Windows Live Book Search....

With collections totaling more than 34 million volumes in the more than 100 libraries on its 10 campuses, the University of California library is the largest research and academic library in the world. In addition, the University of Toronto’s library network, the largest in Canada, has more than 15 million holdings and is one of the top-four research libraries in North America. These important collections will greatly expand the depth and breadth of content available through Windows Live Book Search....

With the support of the Open Content Alliance (OCA), publicly available print materials in UC and U of T libraries will be scanned, digitized and indexed to make them readily accessible to customers. OCA also works with copyright holders to legally scan protected materials.

"This announcement reflects the growing momentum of OCA," said Brewster Kahle, director of the Internet Archive, where OCA resides. "It is both encouraging and helpful to have Microsoft as an anchor in this effort to make public domain material freely available to consumers on the Internet."...