[Sigia-l] Search at Amazon (Search Inside the Book)

[Derek R]

..| The Great Library of Amazonia 
..| http://wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60948,00.html


What does everyone think of Amazon making many of its books (120,000
titles) searchable, disposing with rigid-and-narrow categories-only
architecture, and embracing the openness and potential of user-powered
content-focused navigation (ie. full-text search)?

<quote>
...instead of just displaying books whose title, author, or
publisher-provided keywords match your search terms, your search results
will surface titles based on every word inside the book...
</quote>

I love this Amazon search engine just for the quick-n-easy qualifying of
authors regarding a certain subject matter (ie. your search terms) so
you can see how the subject is being treated by the publishing industry
and who is full-of-it thanks to the instant side-by-side comparison
Amazon is giving.

For instance, type 'findability' into the Amazon search box and the
first result you get is a quote from Alan Cooper stating 'findability'
is 'a term coined by Louis Rosenfeld' in '1998,' followed by examples of
the term published before the 1998 date (<http://tinyurl.com/saif>).

Unlike Google, the book-only/published-only limitation is perfect for
serious yet 'quick' research. No longer, it seems, is the public held
hostage to what 'someone' said was true because of the economic barrier
of buying the books and the time barrier involved in researching for
ourselves ('the burden of the physical'). We are also more free of being
buried in 'all-purpose' generic Google results (the masses) toward a
more authoritative resource (published works). Thank you, Mr. Bezos,
this has real potential.

But how does the copyright work? I can't figure that at all. Isn't this
book-piracy like song-piracy? How did Amazon get the publisher's
permission to do this (as they claim to have done)? What about the
author's rights? I guess by labeling the search results as 'excerpts,'
as Amazon is doing, it is ok? Pictures instead of text?


Derek Rogerson
http://derekrogerson.com/