Google Book Search Grows

Universities in the Netherlands, Switzerland make the tally now 15

By Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 6/15/2007

Google has announced two new European library partners in Google Book Search, including the University Library of Lausanne, Switzerland, the first library in a French-speaking culture. Google and Lausanne will digitize the university’s public domain works, including an array of “Swiss and Francophone literature,” as well as the university’s collections of English, German, Latin, Romansch, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish books.

The University of Ghent late in May announced it would become Google’s first Dutch library partner and sixth European scanning partner. Under the agreement, Ghent University and Google will digitize “thousands of public domain works,” including not only Dutch-language books but out-of-copyright works in German, Latin, Italian, English, and Spanish.

Other European library partners, among 15 total in the project as a whole, include Oxford University, University Complutense of Madrid, the Library of Catalunya, and the Bavarian State Library.