Amazon.com's text search revolution.Amazon.com recently introduced a much-anticipated feature--"Search Inside the Book"--on its Web site that enables customers to search the entire text of electronic copies of books. The feature currently allows Amazon.com visitors to search and browse for words on more than 33 million pages of over 120,000 books, with more titles becoming available every day. The service enables customers to type a word, name, or phrase, and receive a list of instances of those words appearing in the pages of one of the books. With a single click, users can access an image of the page on which the search word or phrase appears. Users can view two pages on either side of the citation Citation (foaled 1945) U.S. Thoroughbred racehorse. In four seasons he won 32 of 45 races, finished second in ten, and third in two. He won the 1948 Triple Crown, and became the first horse to win $1 million. He set a world record in 1950 by running a mile in 1:33 3/5. but can't print the results. Still, the service may render long, tedious library searches all but useless. To produce its huge digital catalog catalog, descriptive list, on cards or in a book, of the contents of a library. Assurbanipal's library at Nineveh was cataloged on shelves of slate. The first known subject catalog was compiled by Callimachus at the Alexandrian Library in the 3d cent. B.C. , Amazon acquired the consent of more than 190 book publishers, who agreed to let Amazon post electronic copies of some of their books on its site. Amazon executives say the search capability will encourage customers to purchase more books, but publishers have expressed fears that allowing people to search complete copies of books will hinder hin·der 1 v. hin·dered, hin·der·ing, hin·ders v.tr. 1. To be or get in the way of. 2. To obstruct or delay the progress of. v.intr. sales. There are also concerns about whether publishers have the right to let Amazon reproduce re·pro·duce v. 1. To produce a counterpart, an image, or a copy of something. 2. To bring something to mind again. 3. To generate offspring by sexual or asexual means. so many pages of authors' works. The recent Newsweek article "Welcome to History 2.0" noted that "we are now on the threshold of a system by which all books are scanned--eventually including even hard-to-find, out-of-print volumes--with their contents instantly accessible ... 'Search inside the book' is part of a revolution made possible by the digitalization digitalization /dig·i·tal·iza·tion/ (dij?i-tal-i-za´shun) the administration of digitalis or one of its glycosides in a dosage schedule designed to produce and then maintain optimal therapeutic concentrations of its cardiotonic of, well, everything. By basing information on a binary lingua franca lingua franca (lĭng`gwə frăng`kə), an auxiliary language, generally of a hybrid and partially developed nature, that is employed over an extensive area by people speaking different and mutually unintelligible tongues in order to , it's now possible to sift through masses of data to find just what you need." According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the article, the next step in the revolution is to make information considered "unarchivable" searchable, too. With the Web, inexpensive storage, powerful computers, and smart software, some predict that physical libraries may soon become obsolete. |
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