The company behind the most-used search engine in the world continued its endeavor to scan library collections from around the word by expanding its book-scanning project to Spain this week.
Google announced Tuesday its new partnership with the University Complutense of Madrid in its Google Books Library Project, an effort to digitize hundreds of thousands of book in the university’s library collection, the largest library in that country. The Spanish institution joins Harvard, New York Public Library, Oxford, Stanford, University of Michigan and University of California in the project the company started two years ago.
“Out-of-copyright books previously only available to people with access to Madrid’s Complutense University Library, or the money to travel, will now be accessible to everyone with an Internet connection, wherever they live,” said Carlos Berzosa, chancellor of the Complutense University of Madrid. “We are quite literally opening our library to the world. The opportunities for education are phenomenal, and we are delighted to be working with Google on this project.”
According to Google, the company also opened an office in Madrid in conjunction with the launch of a Spanish domain -- www.google.es -- earlier this week.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company’s Book Library Project will work in conjunction with its Google Book Search, a service officially launched in August. The search allows users to read portions of books--even full-text versions of classic works in the public domain. Since the project began in October 2004, several industry groups around the world have made their disapproval publicly known of Google’s approach of showing snippets of copyright-protected works.
- Companies:
- University of California San Diego
- People:
- Carlos Berzosa