Ronald Milne is now talking about the Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, which was founded in 1602 and has 120 miles of shelving. The Google Library Project isn’t the Bodleian’s first foray into digitization. Some images have been given to RLG.

Now he’s moved on to the Google project. Google is reasonably altruistic, but let’s not kid ourselves—it’s a means of Google’s remaining the search engine of choice. The project aligns Oxford’s mission statement with Google’s. Oxford was talking with Google as early as 2002. The plan is to digitize 19th century out of copyright material, which amounts to 1-1.5 million times. The project will take up to 3 years. Oxford is legal depository library, meaning that publishers give the library one free copy of their books, so Oxford doesn’t want to antagonize them. Oxford’s already a principal partner in Early English Books Online and the Eighteenth Century Collections. Hugh Griffiths is the project manager for Google. Digitization will take place on university premises. They’re making 2 copies, one for Google and one for Oxford. Now he’s showing slides demonstrating the types of items to be digitized.

Issues include conservation (fragile materials won’t be digitized and newspapers/large format materials are excluded), logistics (space requirements and transporting by van to another part of campus, starting with English, then French, Italian, German, Spanish—it’s not Anglo-centric, that’s nonsense—there are another 430 languages—the French National Library not withstandings, it’s a very international project), and workflow (have to barcode books because the Bodleian is not a lending library and 20% of the stock is uncut.

Page image delivery will probably be JPEG 2000. Google will host for 20 years. Wants Bodleian’s material to be available throughout the world.