In 2006, Microsoft, while being one of the OCA partners, began
developing its own digital library. The beta version of Microsoft Live
Search Books was released in December 2006, with a collection of non
copyrighted books digitized by Microsoft in partner libraries. The
first partner libraries were the British Library and the libraries of
the Universities of California and Toronto, followed in January 2007 by
the New York Public Library and Cornell University Library. Books
offered full text views, with a search by keyword, and could be
downloaded as PDF files. In May 2007, Microsoft announced agreements
with several publishers, for example Cambridge University Press and
McGraw Hill, for their books to be available in Live Search Books.
After digitizing 750,000 books and indexing 80 million journal
articles, Microsoft ended the Live Search Books program in May 2008 and
closed the website. All the digitized books were transferred into the
OCA collection of the Internet Archive.
The OCA collection offered one million books in December 2008, and two
million books in March 2010.
2006 > THE UNION CATALOG WORLDCAT ON THE WEB
[Summary]
In August 2006, WorldCat, a union catalog run by OCLC (Online Computer
Library Center), began migrating to the web with a version available
for free. OCLC was founded as early as 1971 as a non-profit
organization dedicated to furthering access to the world's information
while reducing information costs. In 2005, WorldCat had 61 million
bibliographic records in 400 languages, provided by 9,000 member
libraries in 112 countries. In 2006, 73 million bibliographic records
were linking to one billion documents available in these libraries.
Through the current worldcat.org, member libraries have provided free
access to their catalogs, and free or paid access to their electronic
resources: books, audiobooks, abstracts and full-text articles, photos,
music CDs, and videos. In April 2010, 1,5 billion documents could be
located and/or accessed using WorldCat. The other main union catalog
was run by RLG (Research Librairies Group), that merged with OCLC in
November 2006.
***
In August 2006, WorldCat, a union catalog run by OCLC (Online Computer
Library Center), began migrating to the web with a version available
for free.
WorldCat followed the steps of RLG (Research Libraries Group), that
launched the free web version of the RLG Union Catalog, called
RedLightGreen, in fall 2003, with a full version available in spring
2004.
OCLC and RLG were running the two largest union catalogs in the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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