Austria's national library, Osterreichischen Nationalbibliothek (ONB), has announced a deal with Google to digitize 400,000 copyright-free books. The vast collection spans 400 years of European history. According to ONB, the Austrian library project concerns one of the world's five biggest collections of 16th- to 19th-century literature, totaling about 120 million pages. Under the deal, Google will cover the costs of digitizing the collection, and the ONB will pay to prepare the books for scanning, store the book data, and provide public access to it.
Scanning work will begin in 2011, and is expected to last around six years. The ONB hopes that the process will help preserve its original works, as well as provide digital back-up copies in case of a disaster. According to the head of the ONB library, Google will not have exclusive use of the scanned books, which will be accessible on the ONB's website, the Google Books library and its European counterpart Europeana.
Read AFP News story: Google to scan 400,000 Austrian library books
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