UW-Madison joins Google book-scanning project

The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Google have announced a joint agreement to expand access to hundreds of thousands of public and historical books and documents from the libraries' more than 7.2 million holdings. The university is the eighth major participant to join Google's effort to add digital versions of books to its popular online search engine.

The combined library collections of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Wisconsin Historical Society comprise the eleventh largest collection of documents and historical materials to be found in North America, according to the Association of Research Libraries in Washington, D.C.

State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster says the project has value for Wisconsin schools. "UW-Madison's digitizing program has given special attention to state and regional collections related to history, the environment, and the arts," Burmaster said. "I'm encouraged by the emphasis on expanding access to collections that are useful to Wisconsin educators and students. It makes our best libraries a resource for K-16 education."

"Wisconsin is in a position to take a leading role in making the primary documents of U. S. government history freely available on the Internet for anyone to use," says UW-Madison Provost Patrick Farrell.

The UW-Madison and Google partnership will digitize and provide access to more than 500,000 volumes from the UW-Madison Libraries and the Wisconsin Historical Society Library over a period of six years.

"Whenever possible, the university intends to make the complete content of public documents available on the Internet-including text, images, and maps," says Edward Van Gemert, interim director of the UW-Madison General Library System. Other institutions that have signed cooperative agreements with Google to digitize portions of their collections include Harvard, Michigan, New York Public Library, Oxford, Stanford, the University of California System, and Madrid's Complutense University.

Google is likely to begin scanning materials from the collections and making them available online within several months. The Wisconsin project will focus on library collections that are free of copyright restrictions. Most books published before 1923 and publications of the U. S. government are in the public domain by law.

In addition to public documents, the UW digitizing program will target other high use, non-copyrighted collections, such as history of medicine, patents and discoveries, history of engineering, early publications of scientific societies, American and Wisconsin history, genealogical materials, Wisconsin state documents, decorative arts, visual/material culture, maps, and music.

Last updated on 10/30/2006