With a catalog of about 14 million books, the British Library's collection is one of the biggest in the world, second only to the U.S. Library of Congress. Many of these titles will soon be available to anyone, anywhere; a new partnership between Google and the British Library will put about 250,000 of those texts online.
Google is footing the bill to digitize content that is no longer 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.
One of the library's goals is to allow access to its texts to anyone who wants to do research.
"Through this partnership [we] believe that we are building on this proud tradition of giving access to anyone, anywhere, and at any time," the library's chief executive, Dame Lynne Brindley said. "Our aim is to provide perpetual access to this historical material, and we hope that our collections coupled with Google's known-how will enable us to achieve this aim."
Google already has similar deals with around 40 libraries across the globe.
"What's powerful about the technology available to us today isn't just the ability to preserve history and culture for posterity, but also its ability to bring it to life in new ways," Peter Barron, Google's director of external relations, said in a statement. "This public domain material is an important part of the world's heritage and we're proud to be working with the British Library to open it up to millions of people in the U.K. and abroad."
Some of the examples of British Library texts Google is putting online include a pamphlet about Marie Antoinette and a Spanish inventor's plans for one of the world's first submarines.
The project will take several years to complete.