Today we're delighted to announce the availability of in-copyright book content in the Beta version of Live Search Books!

For hundreds of years books have been the repositories for the world’s most trusted, authoritative knowledge. But until recently, books have been invisible to the world’s search engines. Change is afoot! Starting today, you’ll find search query results from in-copyright books in Live Search Books. The integration of this valuable content will help us improve our ability to answer your questions and point you toward useful sources for additional information. The Live Search Books offering is part of our larger Live Search strategy to deliver the most relevant information possible to our customers in a seamless experience that integrates results culled from a variety of essential sources.

Those of you who have tried Live Search Academic, our search service for scholarly publications, are already familiar with our unique two-pane interface that makes it easy to scan and preview search results. We've carried over that successful design to Live Search Books and made it even better! Our design makes it easy to quickly figure out if a book is relevant to your search, then jump to the relevant information within that book. The preview pane includes a cover image, summary of the book and table of contents previews (where available), and a new hit density map that makes it easy to see where your search results fall in a given title. Seeing where clusters of results fall makes it easy to get to the relevant section of the book quickly and easily, making the best possible use of limited page previews.  To that end, we also have included a page preview counter that tells you how many pages you have left to view within the preview page limit set by the publisher. Of course we also make it easy to search within books: our viewer allows you to search for specific keywords, view full pages or zoom in, flip through page by page, and link to the book’s Table of Contents.  If you decide that you want to own the book, we make it easy to buy it with links to the publisher’s ecommerce enabled web site and major online book retailers.

Another thing that you'll notice about Live Search Books is the quality of our scanned images.  We are taking particular pains to obtain the highest possible quality images to ensure that our customers are getting the best viewing experience possible.

Today’s release includes books from a wide range of publishers. We have paid particular attention to ensuring that we are only including books in our index that our publishing partners have given us permission to include, so our customers and partners can feel secure in our stance on copyright protection. Here are just a few of our launch partners: Academic Resources Corporation, Amherst Media, Bearport Publishing, Cambridge University Press, Edward Elgar Publishing, Harrison House Publishers, Harvard University Press, Hazelden Publishing & Educational Services, Institute for International Economics, John Wiley & Sons Publishing, Lerner Publishing Group, MBI Publishing Company, McGraw-Hill Companies, Microsoft Corporation, MIT Press, OECD, Osprey Publishing, Oxford University Press, Pearson Education, PREP Publishing, Rodale, Rutgers University Press, Simon & Schuster, Springer, SUNY Press, Taylor & Francis Group, The Perseus Books Group, The World Bank, University of Massachusetts Press, Wheatmark, Wilderness Press, World Health Organization, World Scientific Publishing Company, World Wisdom, Yale University Press. There are many more not named here—and many more whose books will be incorporated as we update the index going forward.

Publishers who are interested in submitting content can find out more about the program at publisher.live.com.

Send us your feedback at lsselfbk@microsoft.com and let us know what you think, and be sure to check Live Search Books often as we’ll be adding books to our index on a regular basis.

-- Cliff Guren, Director of Publisher Evangelism, Live Search Selection Team