[Web4lib] Microsoft Book Search

[Crawford,Walt]

I'm not going to offer any deeply studied opinions, but either this
service is changing faster than people can try it or there are some
oddities going on.

I've already read (not sure where) that: 
a. It's only public domain material, 
b. You can only download one PDF page at a time.

The first makes sense: the MS project is at least vaguely related to the
Open Content Alliance, and so far OCA's said they would stick with
public domain material.

The second is a real nuisance, although if you're trying to guide people
to books, maybe fine.

Except that, when I gave it a five-minute try (using the name of my home
town as a pretty sure way to get results without getting the specious
results you'd get from "California" or "Bancroft"), neither seems to be
entirely true.

As for the second: Every book I encountered has a "Download the entire
book" link right beneath the description, on the search-within-the-book
pane, and the link works when I try it. The PDF is indeed pretty good
quality.

As for the first:
Keyword "Modesto" 
The first item is an oral history completed in 1999, and the
rights-limitation statement inside (presumably standard for Bancroft's
Regional Oral History Office at that point) certainly doesn't place it
in the public domain.

Keyword "Television"
Five of the first six results, unsurprisingly, are post-1923, and the
first (at least) has a 1936 copyright that is presumably still in force.

There are some true peculiarities to the interface, at least as
experienced in Firefox 2, but it's certainly an interesting start, and
appears to be a pretty substantial body of material. I suspect some of
those post-1923 items will lose their fully-downloadable status in the
future...

Walt Crawford
Senior Analyst, OCLC RLG Service Center
650-691-2227
crawforw at oclc.org
M-F 7-4 Pacific Time