Google to digitise 250,000 British Library books

Internet giant Google will digitise 250,000 books from the British Library, said a joint statement from the two organisations. Google will cover all digitisation costs.

Internet giant Google will digitise 250,000 books from the British Library, said a joint statement from the two organisations.

In the statement, the British Library and Google said that they will work in partnership to deliver the content free through Google Books and the library website. Full text search, download and reading options will be made available.

Google will cover all digitisation costs, Xinhua reported.

The project is going to cover a huge range of books, pamphlets and periodicals dated 1700 to 1870. This covers a period from the Industrial Revolution to the French Revolution, from the introduction of income tax in Britain and the invention of the telegraph and railway.

It will include material in a variety of European languages and will focus on books that are not yet freely available in digital form online, said the statement.

The British Library contains 150 million reading items, including 14 million books in printed form.