The Internet giant in a blog post stated that the public domain works will be made available via Google Books and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek will receive copies of the scans that can be viewed via the library’s website, as well as to Europeana, a European cultural Web portal.
“The books that we will be scanning represents nearly the library’s entire collection of out-of-copyright books, written during the 18th and 19th centuries,” said Philippe Colombet, a Google strategic partnership development manager.
Moreover, “The collection covers a tumultuous period of Dutch history, which saw the establishment of the country’s constitution and its parliamentary democracy.” “Anyone interested in Dutch history will be able to access and view an absorbing range of works by prominent Dutch thinkers, statesmen, poets and academics and gain new insights into the development of the Netherlands as a nation state,” he said.
This should bring Google a fair step closer to accomplishing its objective of organizing the world’s information and making it accessible to everyone. A post on the company’s European Public Policy Blog explained with regards to the first matter,
Google said it has secured similar arrangements this year with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and the Austrian National Library, and the National Library of the Netherlands had already started scanning other works in its collection.
“It is interesting to note just how many libraries and cultural ministries are now looking to preserve and improve access to their collections by bringing them online,” Colombet said.
It seems like all sorts of individuals and organizations will benefit from this development, then. However, the U.S. federal court is still investigating the terms of a recommended settlement between Google and authors and publishers over the book-scanning project.