Once digitized, these unique works will be available for full text search, download and reading through Google Books, as well as being searchable through the Library’s website and forever stored within the Library’s digital archive.
250,000 of the
British Library's out-of-copyright books from 1700 to 1870 will be
digitized by Google. The project will include material in a variety of major European languages, and will focus on books that are not yet freely available in
digital form online.
The books to be digitized will range from the
French Revolution to the end of slavery including the French and Industrial Revolutions, The Battle of Trafalgar, the Crimean War, the invention of rail travel and of the telegraph.
Researchers, students and other readers of the Library will be able to view historical items from anywhere in the world, to copy, share and manipulate
text for non-commercial purposes.
The first works to be digitized will include "Les droits de la femme. A la reine" (The Rights of Women. To the Queen) by Olympe de Gouges (1791) - pamphlets about Queen Marie-Antoinette; "Proyecto de navegación submarina" (A Scheme for Underwater Seafaring: the Ichthyneus or Fish-Boat) by Narcíso Monturiol (1858) - the invention of the first combustion engine-driven submarine, etc.
