According to this announcement of May 23, Microsoft is shutting down Live Search Academic and Books. It's a shame; I particularly liked some of the Academic features, but MSN clearly decided that it wasn't going to compete with Goliath Google in these arenas. As Microsoft said in its announcement:
...the technology to create these repositories is now available at lower costs for those with the commercial interest or public mandate to digitize book content.
Translation: we couldn't figure out how to make enough money off it, so we hope someone else will do it...
Fortunately, there are several options, besides Google Scholar, including Scirus, the Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations, Public Library of Science, CiteSeer, BizSeer, among others.
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