London — With an enormous catalog of about 14 million books, the British Library’s collection is one of the massive in the world, second only to the U.S. Library of Congress. Global search engine titan, Google Inc., in its relentless quest to create the largest online library, has inked a deal with the British Library that will result in the digitization of about 250,000 books in its catalog.
Google Books has an aspiring mission statement: “Google Books is an effort to produce all of the knowledge contained within the world’s books searchable online.”
That is a tall order, but the company will make a concession in it with a new agreement to scan books, pamphlets about Queen Marie Antoinette, periodicals and an account of a stuffed hippopotamus and appears from between 1700 and 1870, are among 250,000 books being made available online from the British Library.
Many of these titles are all out of copyright, thus avoiding problems Google has previously encountered in the United States and France over its attempts to create a universal digitized library, and will soon be available to anyone, anywhere. This is a nice companion project to the British Library’s new 19th Century Books app that will eventually put thousands of old books on your iPad.
“Our objective is to provide perpetual access to this historical material, and we hope that our collections coupled with Google’s know-how will enable us to achieve this aim,” British Library chief executive Lynne Brindley said.
She said it was building on the library’s “proud philosophy of giving access to anyone, anywhere and at any time.”
Google Books partners with the British Library to deliver a hippopotamus to your browser (Credit: British Library Board)
The British Libraries collection is one of the humongous in the world, boasting some 14 million titles. The search engine behemoth has already scanned 13 million books through partnerships with more than 40 libraries around the world, will scan texts from the 18th and 19th centuries over three years, and makes available through its search results, Peter Barron, Director of External Relations, Google, said in a statement.
“The public domain material is an essential part of the world’s heritage and we are proud to be working with the British Library to open it up to millions of people in the U.K. and abroad,” Barron said in a statement.
Now, the company has also secured rights to out-of-copyright titles dated from 1700 to 1870, which include the time slavery was abolished, landmark inventions such as the railroad were invented and the Industrial Revolution took place. The books will be available free of charge to anyone anywhere.
The initial works to be digitized includes a feminist treatises written in 1791 on Queen Marie Antoinette of France, the wife of King Louis XVI who was executed after the French Revolution.
Besides, there are also plans written by the Spanish inventor Narciso Monturiol dating from 1858 for the first combustion engine-powered submarine, entitled “A Scheme for Underwater Seafaring: the Ichthyneus or Fish-Boat”.
Furthermore, the collection encompasses features “The Natural History of the Hippopotamus, or River Horse”, written by George Louis Leclerc in 1775, which tells the story of a stuffed hippopotamus owned by the Prince of Orange.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, will be footing the bill to digitize content that are no longer confined under copyright. People can view, copy, and search this content dating from 1700-1870 for free via either the British Library site or the Google Books site. Content will be available in a variety of languages, and a focus will be placed on items that have never been available online before.
“What is most powerful about the technology available to us today is not just the ability to preserve history and culture for generations, but also its ability to bring it to life in new ways,” Barron, said in a statement.
The British Library works with a variety of partners and aims to have much of its collection of 150 million items online and available to the public by 2020.
The British Library previously had a collaboration with Microsoft Corp. that resulted in the digitization of 65 million 19th century books, some of which are now available through an app for Apple’s iPad launched earlier this month. “It is not the beginning of our partnerships, and it is certainly not the end,” said Brindley, chief executive of the British Library.
Google is grappling to re-establish its image in Europe after years of fretting with regulators, artists, publishers and privacy advocates in the region. The company has pledged increased hiring, more respect for intellectual property and improved privacy safeguards to win over critics.