Search Content of 120K+ Books

Yesterday, Amazon introduced a major new searchable database, called Search Inside the Book. Covering over 120,000 books, the full text is searchable with the pages that match an Amazon book search query also being displayable. Then you can view two pages forward and back of the matching hit.

This is a significant resource for many information needs from finding books in a local library collection that have specific information to finding references and quotations. However, the Author's Guild has raised concerns about this new database possibly infringing on authors' rights.

Also, for the information professional, it takes a bit of work to use this search feature. It is designed to help sell more books and does not have a separate search form. These "inside the book" matches are displayed after title and keyword matches. Using the Amazon Books advanced search can help or just try a search on very specific words.