The Austrian National Library will digitise all its public domain books from the 16th to the 19th century, making one of the world’s most important historical book collections available online.
About 400,000 works in total will be digitised over the coming years. The project is a public-private partnership with Google. Users will also be able to access the digital books via Europeana.
For info about costs, see #7 below.
Source: Europeana
UPDATE: Here are Two Pages That Have Been MECHANICALLY Translated (using Microsoft Translate and Google Translate). They Contain More Info About the Austrian Books Online Program.
FAQ with Selected Answers Using Both Translation Services
1. The project is currently limited to the digitization of books.
2. Project begins immediately, Austrian National Library and Google working on an implementation plan.
3. Some material in Czech, Hungarian, Polish, French, Italian and Latin will also be digitized.
4.The project is scheduled to take six years but could be completed in shorter period of time.
5. The contract with Google is a non-exclusive one.
6. "The digital copies of books are linked with the Austrian National Library online catalogue. The digitized works by single-clicking on the online catalogue will be available in the future."
7. "Google pays the costs for digitization and text recognition. Even with the digitization process related costs such as transport, are borne by Google. This is a significant investment: typically, in the process digitization and text recognition in libraries cost 50-100 Euros per book."
8. The Austrian National Library and Google will constantly review the quality of the scanning.
9. "Especially valuable books are not currently being considered for digitization, but are not principally excluded from the project. The project plan specifies exactly which books will be digitized. The selection of books is done in close cooperation with the Institute for Restoration of the Austrian National Library."
10. "The Austrian National Library take the security aspects in the digital domain very seriously and has taken measures to protect the data for which it is responsible. The digital images from the project with Google will be available for users inside the Digital Library of the Austrian National Library, without restrictions. However, technical measures are taken to prevent a mass download unlimited and automated access to the data (eg search engines)."
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