The Chronicle has reported that, like Google, Yahoo is in a project to digitize libraries – with a difference. Yahoo is partnering with a number of players in something called the Open Content Alliance, inspired by Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive. Libraries will pay a minimal cost per page to add their volumes to the collection, but they must be either not under copyright or have permission of the copyright holder. The New York Times calls it a “challenge to Google” – for a number of reasons. Results won’t be available only through one search engine, entire texts rather than snippets will be visible, and – gasp! – books will be chosen specifically for the project, rather than entire libraries being scanned wholesale.

First we had Amazon’s Search Inside, then the Google project, now this alliance. All of them are interestingly different takes on making the full text of books searchable online, all of them with a different commercial bent and each with different strengths and weaknesses. One thing that they do reveal, though, is these publicly traded corporations all seem to believe there is a future in making books searchable. And each offers varous challenges to traditional notions of copyright in a digital world.