The city of Antwerp in Belgium will digitize in partnership with Google more than 100?000 works belonging to the Hendrik Conscience heritage library and the Plantin-Moretus Museum.
These works, a treasure of the printing press, were published between the 16th and the 18th century e and on the 19th e century and are no longer subject to copyright. Digitisation work is expected to begin in 2021 and to last at least 3 years.
In September 2020, the first 5,000 selected books will be transported from Antwerp to Google's European scanning centre in batches and at regular intervals by secure transport. Eventually, all the books will be freely accessible via Google Books.
The printing house of the Plantin-Moretus family
The Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp houses the house and printing works of Christophe Plantin, a famous bookbinder and printer whose 500th anniversary is being celebrated this year. The museum contains more than 25?000 old engravings.
Iris Kockelbergh, director of the Plantin-Moretus Museum, states in a press release :
"?Notre venerable library contains not only the most complete collection of Plantin and Moretus prints in the world, but also many rare European prints. Our collection is therefore invaluable for scientific research.?»
The other part of the works from the Hendrik Conscience library includes 85?000 works, of which about 40?000 have been printed abroad: France, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Launched in 2004 with the ambitious goal of digitizing and accessing all books around the world, the Google Books project claimed more than 40 million digitized books in 400 languages by 2019.
