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British Library, Google tie up to digitize books
by Jamie Anderson - June 21, 2011 - comments
Till date, Google has scanned over 13 million books from more than 40 libraries across the world. These books can be accessed through Google Books.
Internet behemoth Google Inc. and the British Library have teamed up to digitize as many as 250,000 out-of-copyright books from the latter’s collections.
The exercise will result in the creation of 40 million online pages that could be viewed with the click of a mouse by avid readers.
Free content
The content will be available free of cost through Google Books as well on the British library’s website.
“We are delighted to be partnering with Google on this project and through this partnership believe that we are building on this proud tradition of giving access to anyone, anywhere and at any time,” British Library Chief Executive Dame Lynne Brindley was quoted as saying in eweek.com.
The digitizing endeavor, which includes printed books, pamphlets and periodicals published from 1700 to 1870, is likely to help scholars, academicians and research scholars.
“We are delighted to be partnering with Google on this project and through this partnership believe that we are building on this proud tradition of giving access to anyone, anywhere and at any time,” British Library Chief Executive Dame Lynne Brindley was quoted as saying in eweek.com.
The Natural History of the Hippopotamus, or River Horse (1775) by Georges Louise Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, The Rights of Women (1791) by Olympe de Gouges, A Scheme for Underwater Seafaring: the Ictineo or Fish-Boat (1858) by Narciso Monturiol are some of the works that will be available online after the digitization process is over.
Google to bear digitization costs
As per terms of the deal, Google will bear all digitization costs. Although the Mountain View, California based company did not divulge the costs involved, it said that the exercise would entail a “substantial sum.”
The Library has taken the onus of packaging the books carefully and sending them to a secret scanning location.
“In the nineteenth century it was an ambition of our predecessors to give everybody access to as much of the world’s information as possible, to ensure that knowledge was not restricted to those who could afford private libraries,” said Brindley.
The present partnership furthers that aspiration.