It seems that the BL will allow Google to place 250,000 books published between 1700 and 1870 online. See AFP article here.
All the works will be available for text search download and reading on the British Library’s website www.bl.uk and at Google Books on books.google.co.uk.
The cost of digitising all 40 million pages will be borne by Google, which has entered similar partnerships with Stanford and Harvard universities in the United States as well as in the Netherlands, Italy and Austria.
BBC article is here, BL press release here (and do read a few other announcements first, and laugh to see how many merely repeat the press release).
This is good news. More.
This is great news indeed…
Wonderful news!