Google books

In 2010, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek announced its partnership with Google to digitize 160,000 pre-1870 out-of-copyright volumes from  libraries.  The University of Leiden is participating in this innovative scanning project. Beginning January 2016, Leiden University Libraries started shipping books to Google for scanning. After scanning, books are returned to the Libraries. The collection includes Dutch publications in a variety of genres, selected on their copyright status and suitability for scanning.

The final scanned versions of these books will be freely available through boeken.kb.nl. Google Books began in 2004, partnering first with Harvard University, New York Public Library, University of Michigan, Oxford University Library and Stanford University. Since partnering with libraries, Google’s digitized corpus contains more than 25 million volumes. This partnership offers the library an opportunity to engage in a large-scale digitization project of its collections providing accessibility 24/7 from anywhere in the world.

Duration: January 2016-March 2017