British Library will now archive UK websites

According to this BBC Online story, “the British Library is now able to store web pages and e-mails in its archive after a legal change.

The library had pushed for electronic items to be included because of the rise in web-based publishing.

“This new legislation will now mean that a vital part of the nation’s published heritage will be safe,” said MP Chris Mole, who supported the move.

The archive will comprise selective “harvesting” from the 2.9 million sites that have “co.uk” suffixes.

The new law was given royal assent on Friday.

The library already has six legal deposit archives which hold a copy of everything published in the UK since 1911. The new formats – which also include CD-Roms – will join these archives, and be available for future study.”

Some people don’t like Amazon’s ‘Search Inside’

The Seattle Times has a report that trade book authors (many of whom do pretty well out of Amazon) don’t like the new Search Inside facility because it might enable users to get the key piece of information they are seeking without having to buy the book. “The feature is particularly troubling to reference-book authors who think they may lose a sale if a user can find “the best place to hike in Chaco Canyon” or “where to find the best airfare to Cuba” by using Amazon’s search feature instead.

The new feature may have other problems: Each search allows the user to see the full-text of the page where the keyword appears, plus two pages forward and two backward. But savvy searchers can actually read more of the book.

In an e-mail to its members, The Authors Guild, the country’s oldest and largest society of published authors, said it was able to print out 108 consecutive pages from a best-selling book by using key search terms.

An attempt to use the method yesterday successfully called up more than 150 pages of a travel book.”

Yeah! And I can also dig my garden with a teaspoon.

Update:According to Wired, “Amazon.com’s new book-searching feature does not allow users to print pages from within books, soothing authors who feared the tool could give users too much free content at the expense of book sales.”

Microsoft trying to buy Google?

Yep. The NYT is reporting that “According to company executives and others briefed on the discussions, Microsoft – desperate to capture a slice of the popular and ad-generating search business – approached Google within the last two months to discuss options, including the possibility of a takeover.”

There will be a lot more of this as Google moves towards a stock market flotation. The obvious thing to do is for Google to auction its shares to Internet users rather than going down the usual corrupt route of letting merchant banks corner huge blocks of shares — enabling their clients to make easy killings and control of the company to pass to Redmond in due course.

Lovely piece in today’s Economist about Google. Nice cartoon too.

Image (c) The Economist 2003, naturally.