Google

In 2007, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek concluded an agreement with the company Google, on the basis of which the copyright-free older holdings of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek have been digitized up to the present day. Within the framework of this public-private partnership, far more than one million titles have been digitized so far and made available internationally free of charge.

It is important to mention that the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek receives an identical copy of its own of all books scanned by Google. Moreover, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek also receives all files from Google which are produced continuously, for example in the form of text files produced by OCR on the basis of a scan. The digital copies are available in BSB DISCOVER! and many of them have been integrated in German and European library projects by means of their metadata.

More than 2,500 digitized works are downloaded in their entirety every day, also on weekends, by interested persons worldwide, and serve as a basis for research and scholarship. In this manner the unique historical holdings of the library will be made accessible to millions of people all over the world.

Of course, the collections of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek are also offered within the framework of Google Books. We do not have any information about the user figures of this service, but it makes us a little proud to note that through the commitment of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the German language is the second most widely used language at Google Books after English.