Digitalisation of the nation’s written works is being handed to the world’s largest search engine

While authors and publishers around the world are scared of Google's attempt to scan the world's libraries and make them available on the web, The Royal Library has agreed to let the search engine to do the job.

The reason for the move is that Google is willing to put up the money for the project, which the library has not been able to obtain from politicians.
Erland Kolding Nielsen, the library’s curator, estimates that the library needs up to half a billion kroner to preserve Danish literature published prior to the year 2000 in digital form. Parliament has, however, only approved up to 7 million kroner from 2010 to 2012 for the project.

‘I’m offering Google approximately 1.6 million volumes for scanning,’ Nielsen told Politiken newspaper. ‘Currently they have around 10 million volumes and their goal is to reach 30 million.’

Nielsen said the alternative to not getting the collection digitised is a frightening one for the Danish language.

‘I believe Danish culture and Danish material on the web would disappear in the Anglo-Saxon deluge,’ he said. ‘Our language would shrink even more from sight, as would much of the Danish research that is not written in English.’

Nielsen has twice previously tried to negotiate with Google, but so far without success. In contrast, the library had managed to secure a collaboration with UK-based company ProQuest, which is responsible for the digitisation of books from the 15th and 16th centuries.

That agreement cost 10 million kroner and included some of the oldest works in the royal library’s collection. But the Google agreement will allow for the entire collection to finally be digitised.

Santiago de la Mora, Google's European division head, said the search engine is interested in cooperation with as many libraries as possible. Although he would not comment on the terms of the cooperation, he did say that one condition was an absolute necessity.

‘We focus exclusively on the content from libraries in Europe that is within the public domain,’ said de la Mora.

Therefore The Royal Library will not be able to digitise any copyrighted works from after around 1940, as those works only enter the public domain 70 years after the copyright holder has died.

Culture Minister Carina Christensen said the government was fully open to cooperation with private companies for the digitisation.

‘Considering the sheer size of the task we face, it’s very important that we also have non-governmental resources helping to do the work,’ she said. ‘But what’s important – and this is something that EU countries have highlighted several times – is that our cultural heritage remains ours even in digital form.’