Pages from history
The British Library has teamed up with Google to make a small selection of its 150 million archived works available online. 250,000 pieces will be scanned - a total of 40 million pages - dating from 1700 to 1870, and all will be freely available via Google Books.
The date period being archived covers both the French and Industrial Revolutions, and such events as the abolition of slavery in the UK, the Crimean War, the Battle of Trafalgar and the invention of the telegraph. As well as covering a broad range of topics, the material to be scanned also covers a broad range of European languages, including French and Dutch works, in addition to English texts.
According to the Library the works being scanned will range "from feminist pamphlets about Queen Marie-Antoinette (1791), to the invention of the first combustion engine-driven submarine (1858), and an account of a stuffed Hippopotamus owned by the Prince of Orange (1775)."
As well as being searchable online, the scanned items will also be free to share, copy and manipulate (for non-commercial purposes), with researchers and students expected to be the primary beneficiaries of the increased ease of access to these archived works. The digitised works will, in addition populating Google Books, be stored by the Library in its digital archive, made available via its own website, and provided to the European Digital Library.
