Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Thursday, December 13, 2007

Columbia joins the Google Library project

Columbia University has joined the Google Library project.  See today's press release:

Columbia University Libraries and Google, Inc. have signed an agreement to digitize a large number of the Libraries’ books in the public domain and make them available online. The project...will evaluate and review hundreds of thousands of volumes from the Libraries’ collections over the next six years.

The Columbia University Libraries collections contain a remarkable range of books on a wide variety of subjects and dozens of languages from 25 distinct libraries. Among the hundreds of collections that are being considered for digitization are areas in which Columbia has particularly strong holdings, for instance architecture from the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library; political science, sociology, and environmental science from the Lehman Social Sciences Library; Area Studies collections of history and literature materials from Eastern Europe, Central and South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin and South America; or East Asian languages and history from the C. V. Starr East Asian Library. Their inclusion will extend and enrich the scope of the materials available through Google Book Search....

Because the books being digitized are in the public domain, users will be able to view the full text of the books and download them for leisure reading, research or printing for later reference....

“Our participation in the Google Book Search Library Project will add significantly to the extensive digital resources the Libraries already deliver,” said James Neal, Columbia’s vice president for information services and university librarian. “It will enable the Libraries to make available more significant portions of its extraordinary archival and special collections to scholars and researchers worldwide in ways that will ultimately change the nature of scholarship.”

Alan Brinkley, provost and Allan Nevins Professor of American History, said, “The Google partnership promises enormous benefits to Columbia University and the communities it serves. Amongst them, of course, is the free and open full-text access we can provide to our public domain holdings.”

Columbia Libraries will receive a digital copy of every book scanned and will, in the coming months, decide the various uses of those copies....

Columbia University Libraries is one of the top ten academic library systems in the nation, with 9.2 million volumes....

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