Yale University has announced an agreement with technology firm Microsoft Corp., US, to provide readers worldwide with online access to thousands of rare books in Yale's Library. Under the initiative, Microsoft will digitise many volumes found only in the Yale collections and bring them online via its Live Search interface. The Microsoft-Yale project will initially focus on the digitisation of 100,000 out-of-copyright English-language books.
Yale University Library holds collections of enduring research value. It is digitising many of its special collections including manuscripts, archival documents, maps, photographs, audio and visual materials, rare works of art, and slides used for teaching and research. The new initiative is expected to produce substantial benefits for the Yale community and for researchers worldwide. Benefits include being able to reunite collections virtually that are physically housed in different repositories; allowing the full text to be indexed, which enables researchers to locate relevant material not accessible through traditional indexes or library catalogues; giving faculty enhanced electronic access to scholarly materials; and increasing student access to digital research and instructional materials.
Digital files can be used to integrate research material with online teaching services and with inter-institutional collaborative projects, such as the Live Search Books programme with the British Library, Cornell University and the Universities of California and Toronto. The project will maintain rigorous standards established by the Yale Library and Microsoft for the quality and usability of the digital content, and for the safe and careful handling of the physical books.
Yale and Microsoft will work together to identify which of the nearly 13 million volumes held by Yale's 22 libraries will be digitised. Books selected for digitisation will remain available for use by students and researchers in their physical form. Digital copies of the books will also be preserved by the Yale Library.
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