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Saturday, September 29, 2007

BL and Microsoft digitize 19th century books

Cristina Jimenez, British Library books go digital, BBC News, September 28, 2007.  Excerpt:

More than 100,000 old books previously unavailable to the public will go online thanks to a mass digitisation programme at the British Library.

The programme focuses on 19th Century books, many of which are unknown as few were reprinted after first editions....

"What we can read now is predetermined by a long tradition of what has been considered great literature," ...added [Kristian Jensen, from the British Library]....

The first 25 million pages are expected to take two years to complete. Texts which are hard to get hold of will particularly benefit from the digitisation....

For example, authors who were only ever published outside the great centres of literary life have tended not to remain in print and have often been forgotten. Now, these authors will have a second chance to reach a readership.

"By digitising the whole collection, we give access to the books without the filter of later judgments, whether based on taste or on the economics of printing and publishing," Dr Jensen said.

The new category of digitised titles will supplement other early historic printed books which the British Library has already made available for viewing online through previous projects.

Those are included in two commercial resources: the Early English Books Online and the Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Both collections are freely available to higher education institutions in the UK....

Digitised publications will be accessible in two ways -initially through Microsoft's Live Search Books and then via the Library's website....

Due to copyright restrictions and intellectual property issues, the agreement between Microsoft and the British Library covers only "public domain" materials....

Comment.  I can't tell whether access to these digital editions will be free of charge for everyone or only free of charge to higher education institutions in the UK.  Some Microsoft digitization projects are part of the Open Content Alliance, which is fully committed to OA, and some are not.  For other access concerns, see the blog comments by Andy Powell and Stephen Downes.