British Library ebook project

More than 65,000 19th-century works of fiction from the British Library’s collection are to be made available for free to the public. Amazon Kindle users will be able to read well known works by writers such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, as well as works by thousands of less famous authors.  The library’s ebook project is another important event in the book world where the influence and longer term effects of ebooks on the publishing market is an unknown quantity. It is funded by Microsoft. Other online services, such as Google Books, offer out-of-copyright works for free; users of the British Library service will be able to read from pages in the original books in the library’s collection.  Most downloadable books on the Kindle are by contemporary authors because they are the most profitable for publishers. The jury is still out on what to charge for out of copyright works.  The British Library ebooks will be free of charge and will include works by Dickens and Hardy.  It will also be possible to purchase printed copies from Amazon which will have the original typeface and illustrations. Whether this will ‘revolutionise access the world’s greatest library resources’ as the library’s chief executive claimed is another matter – it may be that the real value is not in the availability of works which are already easily accessible at low or zero cost through other means – local libraries, bookshops, people’s own bookshelves – but in the digital versions of those works which are rare, or to which access in the British  Library is difficult for researchers outside the UK.  The library intends to continue its digitisation scheme by scanning books out of copyright from the early 20th century.