The Cornell University Library has given about 80,000 digitized public domain books to the Internet Archive.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

In an effort to make its materials globally accessible, Cornell University Library is sharing tens of thousands of digitized books with the Internet Archive.

"We have been carefully preserving and storing materials for years, and now we're diversifying the channels for them to be studied and used," said Oya Reiger, associate university librarian for information technologies. "We have the ability to take books to the places where readers are."

The new collaboration repurposes nearly 80,000 books that the Library has already digitized in-house or through its partnership with Microsoft and Kirtas Technologies. All the books are in the public domain, printed before 1923 mainly in the United States. They cover a host of subject areas, including American history, English literature, astronomy, food and wine, general engineering, the history of science, home economics, hospitality and travel, labor relations, Native American materials, ornithology, veterinary medicine and women's studies. . . .

"Expanding access to knowledge is one of the Library's core principles, and we are excited to participate in the open-access vision of the Internet Archive," said Anne R. Kenney, Carl A. Kroch University Librarian.

The collaboration with Internet Archive is another step in Cornell University Library's cutting-edge participation in mass digitization initiatives. Earlier this year, the Library announced an expanded print-on-demand partnership with Amazon.com that allows readers to pay for reprinting of books on an individual basis.

"The Internet Archive is proud to process and host the books from Cornell — these collections are priceless," said Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive. "We are happy that Microsoft put no restrictions on the scanned public domain books and Cornell is encouraging maximum readership and research use."

Performing a simple search for one of Cornell University Library's digitized books now brings up both a copy on Amazon and a free online copy on the Internet Archive.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 11:01 pm and is filed under ARL Libraries, E-Books, Open Access, Public Domain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.