Library News from Google ... *and* UM! (fwd)

[Patricia F Anderson]

Full press release will be available on the University of Michigan and UM
Libraries homepages.

<http://www.umich.edu/>
<http://www.lib.umich.edu/>

Released Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Google/U-M project opens the way to universal access to information

ANN ARBOR, Mich. --- Google and the University of Michigan today (Tuesday)
announced a joint agreement that will add the seven million volumes in the
U-M library to the Google search engine and open the way to universal
access to information.

[snip]

U-M brings to the partnership a collection of great size and breadth and a
position as one of the nation's leaders in digital preservation.  The U-M
Library is the sixth largest in the country, and its digital collection of
roughly 22,000 volumes also is one of the most ambitious in the country.
Notable is the Making of America Collection, a thematically-related
digital library of more than 9,000 volumes that documents American social
history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.
(http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/)  At its current rate of digital
production, however, it would take the University more than a thousand
years to digitize the seven million volumes in the collection.  Google
plans to do the job in about six years.

[snip]

For more information and examples, visit
<http://print.google.com/library/>.