YOUR GO-TO INTELLIGENCE RESOURCE FOR THE SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

Internet search services provider Google, Inc. and Columbia University Libraries have signed an agreement to digitise a large number of the Libraries' books in the public domain and make them available online. The project, which is one of several collaborations between Google and major research libraries, will assess and review hundreds of thousands of volumes from the Libraries' collections over the next six years.

The Columbia University Libraries collections contain books on a wide variety of subjects and dozens of languages from 25 distinct libraries. Among the collections that are being considered for digitisation are areas in which Columbia has particularly strong holdings. This includes political science, sociology, and environmental science from the Lehman Social Sciences Library; Area Studies collections of history and literature materials from Eastern Europe, Central and South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin and South America; or East Asian languages and history from the C. V. Starr East Asian Library. This inclusion is projected to extend the scope of the materials available through Google Book Search.

Digital copies of the books from Columbia will be fully searchable through Google Book Search. Users will be able to view the full text of the books and download them for leisure reading, research or printing for later reference. By partnering with Google Book Search, the Libraries will support the research and teaching mission of the University by archiving and making accessible scholarly resources that the Libraries have been collecting since the early nineteenth century.

Columbia University Libraries is the most recent library to partner with Google Book Search. Other libraries who are currently working with Google to digitise portions of their collections include the University of California, Harvard University, University Complutense of Madrid, University of Michigan, the New York Public Library, Oxford University, Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.