Thinking Outside the Box

摘要

Lately, I've been investigating a large, digital book-search service. It contains more than 100,000 digital texts from dozens of prominent trade, professional, and academic publishers, including mass-market titles, technical and professional books, and popular and literary fiction. The entire collection, categorized subsets, and individual books are full-text searchable, employing multiple search, sort, and output options. What is this impressive database? Is it netLibrary, the leading library-oriented e-book vendor? Is it ebrary, the innovative e-text aggregator? Is it Project Gutenberg, the great collection of classic literature? No, it's Search Inside This Book (SITB), Amazon's new e-tailing enhancement. Now, don't immediately dismiss Search Inside This Book as just another flashy gimmick from a Web book retailer. (Any sort of bookselling is a good thing. At a time when media consumption is dominated by movies, video games, and Web sites―all of which emphasize sensation and sensory stimulation―we need anything that promotes reflection and intellectual deliberation.