Microsoft to launch online library

SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft will unveil an online library to compete with Google’s project to digitise the world’s books. Microsoft said it will launch a US test of Live Search Books featuring tens of thousands of out-of-copyright books, including works held by the British library and major universities in Toronto and California.

“With this initial release, we’ve focused on making the reading experience as natural as possible,” project director Cliff Guren wrote in a blog posted on the Microsoft website. In late August, Google restarted its Google Book Search project initiated in 2004 with the lofty aim of scanning every literary work into digital format and making them available online.