Students, faculty and the global public will soon be able to discover nearly 190,000 titles from Rutgers University Libraries’ collections online, as a result of a new partnership with Google.
The Google Books Library Project aims to ‘build a searchable catalogue of the world’s books online.’ Through Rutgers' participation in the Google Books Library Project, a variety of books, journals and other documents spanning centuries and crossing genres will be scanned and made searchable via Google Books, the HathiTrust Digital Library and QuickSearch, the Libraries’ online search portal.
Rutgers’ contribution to Google Books includes items that are rare, no longer in print or otherwise difficult to access. They run the gamut from scientific reports and conference proceedings to the collected works of renowned composers, philosophers and poets.
Candidates for digitisation include publications by federal, state and city organisations ranging from the U.S. Geological Survey to the New Brunswick Free Public Library. Documents capturing Rutgers’ rich history are also represented, such as Rutgers College alumni publications and songbooks from the New Jersey College for Women, the predecessor to Douglass College.
To date, dozens of libraries around the world have participated in the Google Books Library Project, including other libraries in the Big Ten Academic Alliance. It remains one of the largest cooperative ventures of its kind in higher education.
In the coming months, Google will begin to scan the Rutgers materials at their off-campus facility. After scanning, the physical books will be returned to Rutgers and a digital copy of all items will be deposited into the HathiTrust Digital Library for preservation. Once added to Google Books and HathiTrust, the full text of each title will be searchable.
Items in the public domain can be accessed in full, while bibliographic information and previews will be available for other volumes. Rutgers affiliates with print disabilities may also be granted specialised access to the digital versions of certain in-copyright materials through HathiTrust.
The project is expected to take at least two years, with up to 10,000 books being scanned per month.
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