Thousands of books and papers from the British Library’s collection will soon be made available online through a new partnership with Google.
Google and the British Library will work together to digitise 250,000 out-of-copyright texts from the 18th and 19th centuries.
The British Library’s digital collection is expected to increase from 1.25m items to 50m by 2020, as it seeks to find new ways to open its collection to academics and members of the public, often free of charge. Scanning the texts without Google’s help would cost the library millions of pounds.
The scheme was launched by Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, at a press conference on Monday morning in London.
Google Books, a venture started by the US search technology company in 2004, has already scanned more than 15m texts but the scheme has been held up by legal wrangling. The US Department of Justice is yet to approve a settlement that Google agreed with authors and publishers who sued the company in 2005, amid continuing concerns about copyright and antitrust issues.
The British Library’s deal with Google comes as more public institutions are encouraged to turn to commercial partners, as government funding is squeezed. Its latest digitisation project follows partnerships with Microsoft, which made available thousands of 19th-century books on Apple’s iPad, and Brightsolid, the online family history company which is scanning 40m newspaper pages. The library will soon release further iPad apps as result of the partnership with Microsoft.
Last December, Google launched its eBookStore, which competes with Apple and Amazon’s digital book shops, with the backing of all six major US publishers.
Among the British Library texts to be digitised are feminist pamphlets about the French queen Marie-Antoinette from 1791 and an account of the first combustion-engine driven submarine from 1858. Only works produced before 1870 will be scanned, to avoid copyright issues.
Google has previously worked with about 40 libraries on digitisation projects, none of which are directly revenue-generating. Google says that its aim is to give users of its search engine “high quality things to search for”. The British Library’s collection will be made available to search and download via its own website and the Google Books site.
The digitisation process is expected to take several years. Each text will be taken from the British Library to an undisclosed location, meaning it will unavailable to visitors to the library for months at a time.
Dame Lynne said that many of the books being scanned would not be in English, given the amount of English texts already available online through Google’s service.
Although the 250,000 books are only a tiny fraction of all those published during the period, the “massive” scale of the project meant that corporate involvement was essential, Dame Lynne told the FT.
“However much funding one got from the government, you could never do it all. We are looking at this kind of innovative partnership where there is real benefit delivered to our users. For us it is additional expertise and additional resource – there is no money changing hands in this partnership. It’s an additional way of achieving our mission, namely to open the collections.”
The British Library remains open to further partnerships with other companies, she added.
Source: www.ft.com
Google and the British Library will work together to digitise 250,000 out-of-copyright texts from the 18th and 19th centuries.
The British Library’s digital collection is expected to increase from 1.25m items to 50m by 2020, as it seeks to find new ways to open its collection to academics and members of the public, often free of charge. Scanning the texts without Google’s help would cost the library millions of pounds.
The scheme was launched by Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, at a press conference on Monday morning in London.
Google Books, a venture started by the US search technology company in 2004, has already scanned more than 15m texts but the scheme has been held up by legal wrangling. The US Department of Justice is yet to approve a settlement that Google agreed with authors and publishers who sued the company in 2005, amid continuing concerns about copyright and antitrust issues.
The British Library’s deal with Google comes as more public institutions are encouraged to turn to commercial partners, as government funding is squeezed. Its latest digitisation project follows partnerships with Microsoft, which made available thousands of 19th-century books on Apple’s iPad, and Brightsolid, the online family history company which is scanning 40m newspaper pages. The library will soon release further iPad apps as result of the partnership with Microsoft.
Last December, Google launched its eBookStore, which competes with Apple and Amazon’s digital book shops, with the backing of all six major US publishers.
Among the British Library texts to be digitised are feminist pamphlets about the French queen Marie-Antoinette from 1791 and an account of the first combustion-engine driven submarine from 1858. Only works produced before 1870 will be scanned, to avoid copyright issues.
Google has previously worked with about 40 libraries on digitisation projects, none of which are directly revenue-generating. Google says that its aim is to give users of its search engine “high quality things to search for”. The British Library’s collection will be made available to search and download via its own website and the Google Books site.
The digitisation process is expected to take several years. Each text will be taken from the British Library to an undisclosed location, meaning it will unavailable to visitors to the library for months at a time.
Dame Lynne said that many of the books being scanned would not be in English, given the amount of English texts already available online through Google’s service.
Although the 250,000 books are only a tiny fraction of all those published during the period, the “massive” scale of the project meant that corporate involvement was essential, Dame Lynne told the FT.
“However much funding one got from the government, you could never do it all. We are looking at this kind of innovative partnership where there is real benefit delivered to our users. For us it is additional expertise and additional resource – there is no money changing hands in this partnership. It’s an additional way of achieving our mission, namely to open the collections.”
The British Library remains open to further partnerships with other companies, she added.
Source: www.ft.com
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