Microsoft Book Digitization Project

Yale University Library and Microsoft have entered into an agreement to digitize 100,000 books from Yale's collections in 2008. The books, when digitized, will appear on Microsoft's Live Books search.

The books chosen will be those published before 1923, and thus part of the public domain and free from copyright restrictions. As part of the digitization process an image will be made from each page in the book. The text in the image will be processed and stored, with the result that the full text of the book will be keyword searchable. The current candidates for digitization include only books written in English. The selected books will focus on Art and Art History, History, Religion, and Travel.

The project will maintain rigorous standards established by the Yale Library and Microsoft for the quality and usability of the digital content, and for the safe and careful handling of the physical books. Yale and Microsoft will work together to identify which of the approximately 13 million volumes held by Yale's 22 libraries will be digitized. Books selected for digitization will remain available for use by students and researchers in their physical form. Digital copies of the books will also be preserved by the Yale Library for use in future academic initiatives and in collaborative scholarly ventures.

The books will be digitized by Kirtas Technologies, which is opening a facility in Wallingford, CT.

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