Just Once, Microsoft Did Something Right
In the entire history of Microsoft Corporation, they did just one good thing — so now of course they have decided it was a mistake. About two and a half years ago Microsoft announced they would bring ‘millions’ of public domain books and articles to the Internet. They teamed up with the Internet Archive and several major libraries, and began scanning.
This resource has been a major boon to those of us more interested in obscure and arcane topics rather than the latest Brittany Spears gossip — admittedly a minority, and probably not the most economically influential market on-line — but still a huge group of devoted users. The information is free, only has some annoying watermarks advertising the Microsoft role in the project, and has archived for the future a wealth of information. About 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles were scanned, according to a New York Times report. So Microsoft is discontinuing its support for the project.
The Library of Congress has about 30 million books. There is no such thing as a complete collection anywhere, but we can guestimate that if LOC has 30 million books, there are probably at least that many public domain books available (i.e. the currently copyrighted books probably number roughly the same as expired copyright books that the LOC does not have.) So Microsoft got about 2% of the job done, then quit. Typical.
Google, of course, has a similar project, but not anywhere near as useful. They do not allow access to many books that are clearly expired copyright; the company owns and controls the database, so it’s archival future is at the whim of corporate managers; and they have not focused on expired copyright books, so the vast majority are not fully accessible.
When the history of Microsoft is written, the book search project will be remembered as the one good thing Microsoft ever did — too bad they gave up after barely scratching the surface of available materials.