Google Digitization Project in Netherlands Also Involves Europeana
By Norman Oder July 15, 2010After signing agreements with national libraries in Italy and Austria, Google has announced a partnership with the National Library of the Netherlands, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), to supplement the latter's digitization work by scanning most of its public domain books, more than 160,000 volumes from the 18th and 19th centuries.
As explained on the Inside Google Books blog, the collection will not only become available via Google Books—the KB will make the books available on its own website and via Europeana, the digital library of Europe that initially was dominated by materials from France and Germany.
The KB earlier this year announced plans to digitize all Dutch books, newspapers and periodicals from 1470 onwards. (The library has about six million items.)
According to the KB, the books to be digitzed include works by leading Dutch figures such as J.R. Thorbecke, the father of the Dutch parliamentary democracy, and Abraham Kuyper, founder of the country first political party and founder of the Free University and of the Reformed Church.
At an American Library Association annual conference panel last month, a Google representative pointed to increasing coversations in Europe about mass digitization, with a recognition by European cultural leaders that they need to catch up with the United States.
