One of the world’s biggest collections of historic books, pamphlets and periodicals is to be made available on the internet for the first time. The British Library has reached a deal with search engine Google about texts dating back to the 18th Century. It will allow readers to view, search and copy the out-of-copyright works at no charge. Google will also make the books available on its site. The library gets more than a million visitors a year.
It has more than 150 million items representing every age of written civilisation, including books, journals, manuscripts, maps, stamps, music, patents, photographs, newspapers and sound recordings in all written and spoken languages. Google has similar partnerships with about 40 libraries around the world. Its plans to digitise copyrighted texts has run into serious legal problems. Among critics were the Authors Guild of America and the Association of American Publishers.
