Microsoft is working with the British Library to make the 19th century books at the Library available for viewing online – first via Microsoft’s Live Search Books and then via the Library’s website.
The books will be fully text searchable, meaning users will be able to look for keywords within a publication, making research easier and enhancing interaction with the material.
Looks like Microsoft is competing with Google, which is doing digitization projects with Stanford, Harvard, and Michigan university libraries, the New York public library and the Bodleian library in Oxford.
Read the full story at BBC news. Thanks to Steven Matthews for his news tips.
JR Dixey
October 1, 2007 — 11:57 pm
Another interesting digitization project is the Open Library started by the Archive (aka the Internet Archive). Similar to Google Books, with a touch of Wikipedia – anyone can scan in and upload a book. For now they are accepting only books that are out of copyright, but they hope to make deals with publishers and/or libraries down the road to enable even current published books to be part of the archive. The reader features animated page-turning and a placeholder for a voice version of each book.