October 29, 2006
Updated 10:36:57 (Mla time)
NEW YORK -- Online book buffs can select from an array of Internet libraries, with hosts such as Google and Open Content Alliance, which promise to fetch written works at the clicks of computer mice.
While imperfect, the websites and their search engines have already opened extraordinary possibilities to readers and researchers in online communities worldwide.
- Google Book Search (http://books.google.com). By far the most known online library to date, the Google book project has scanned the pages of "thousands" of works into digital format.
Text from classics in the public domain is available in full. Summaries or snippets of books still under copyright are provided of books still under copyright protection.
A search engine taking the place of library card indexes makes it possible to seek authors' names, publication dates, or words or expressions in the texts or titles.
The oldest book in the Google virtual library to date was a Latin work from 1521. The number of books of the data base has remained secret. The collection contained many books from the 18th and 19th centuries and the majority were in English.
By typing a key word, the Net surfer gets a set of pages showing matching text highlighted in yellow. Editors can dictate whether portions or all the pages of works are made available online.
If the publisher or author has not given permission regarding copyrighted works, the search engine shows only the passages where the key words were found along with information about the book and where it can be bought or borrowed.
Classic works such as Dante's Inferno and the Encyclopedia of Diderot are available in their entirety, sometimes for download in printable format. Google does not put advertising in the works.
- Open Content Alliance (http://www.archive.org/details/texts): Most open. For the moment the library has 35,000 scanned books, mostly in English.
All of the works are not copyright protected -- often more than 50 years old -- and downloadable, printable, and free to be re-used for commercial purposes. The search engine is less sophisticated than that of Google Books but can scout out reference words if the quality of the scanned pages is sufficient.
- Windows Live Search Books, an online literature search engine being developed by Microsoft Computer, is slated for release "later this year."
The Windows Live Search Books Publisher Program website (http://publisher.live.com/) invites authors and publishers send their books to be scanned.
- Gallica, the site of the national Library of France. Lists 90,000 digitized books available in "image mode" but does not feature scanning by key words within page text.
- Specialized websites: offer text versions of digitized works, usually classics, that can be downloaded for reading or printing and allow searches by key words.
For example the site of "complete works of Shakespeare" (http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/) created in 1993 or the site of Molière (http://www.site-moliere.com/). Other sites highlight poetry, essays, books or other themes.
http://services.inq7.net/express/06/10/29/html_output/xmlhtml/20061029-29388-xml.html
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