The Austrian library project has one of the five biggest collections of 16th to 19th century literature in the world and Google has managed to get a piece of the pie.

On 15 June 2010 Austria’s national library (ONB) announced that it has struck a €30 million (about R270 million) deal with US Internet giant Google to digitise 400 000 copyright-free books, a vast collection spanning 400 years of European history.

Google will cover the costs of digitising the collection, set at around €50 to €100 per book, a sum the library says it was unable to raise without external funding.

Scanning work is likely to take six years and will begin in 2011 in Bavaria in southern Germany.

Johanna Rachinger, head of the ONB Library said “the library hopes the process will help preserve its original works, as well as providing digital back-up copies in case of a disaster.” She also stated that Google will not have exclusive use of the scanned books; they will be accessible on the ONB’s website, the Google Books library and its European counterpart www.europeana.eu.

To date, Google has digitised about 12 million books, drawn from more than 40 libraries. Opponents to these projects have raised concerns about copyrighting issues, and have even challenged Google’s activities in court in some cases, with US lawsuits filed by authors and publishers and more recently by photographers, and similar action under way in France.

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Source: www.ioltechnology.co.za; Image source: Google Images