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Google Book Search finishing scanning the Bodleian library
March 26, 2009 | 1:55 pm
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By Paul Biba
From the Inside Google Book Search Blog
In 2004, Google began a partnership with Oxford University Library to scan mostly 19th century public domain books from its Bodleian library. Five years on, we’re delighted to announce the end of this phase of our scanning with Oxford, our first European partner. Together, we have digitized and made available on Google Book Search many hundreds of thousands of public domain books from the Bodleian and other Oxford libraries, representing the bulk of their available public domain content.
From English to German, to Spanish and French, most of the digitized works date from the 19th century and range from classic literature to more scientific volumes in fields including Geography, Philosophy or Anthropology. Among some of the works now available through Book Search, you can find the first English translation of Newton’s Mathematical principles of natural philosophy from 1729, the first edition of Jane Austen’s Emma, and John Cassell’s Illustrated History of England. You can search and read the full text of these works on Google Book Search, and download and print a pdf if you wish to.
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Comments:
That is an impressive milestone for Google and Oxford. There is a fascinating blog post by Brewster Kahle about the Economics of Book Digitization. Kahle is a prime mover at the Internet Archive and the Open Content Alliance, and he estimates that Google’s scanning cost is well below $10/book, maybe as low as $5/book. Kahle’s post discusses scanning projects in China and India, and the approximate number of books that have been scanned:
Google’s announcement points with pride to a scanned version of “The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” by Newton but it appears that the scan of the page numbered 162 is defective. I reported the page using a convenient special link that Google provides. On the other hand, maybe the book is damaged and the poor page image is the best that can be obtained.