Rutgers University and Google partner to create online library

Rutgers and Google partner to embark on a project that will migrate nearly 190,000 publications from the university’s collection to an online library which can be accessed by students, faculty and the public.

This endeavour, the Google Books Library Project aims to develop an online library of books from around the world, complete with a searchable catalogue.

Rutgers’ participation in this project will contribute close to 190,000 titles, including a variety of books, journals and other documents spanning centuries and crossing genres to the online library.

These selected titles will be scanned, uploaded and can be accessed via Google Books, the HathiTrust Digital Library and QuickSearch, the Libraries’ online search portal.

This collaboration with Google Books will see the university’s contribution of books that are of extraordinary value, as they consist of titles that are rare, no longer in print or otherwise difficult to access.

This initiative will also see the digitisation of other valuable publications including scientific reports, conference proceedings as well as the collected works of renowned composers, philosophers and poets.

Vice President for Information Services at Rutgers, Krisellen Maloney said that the university is committed to serve as an essential information resource for the state and beyond.

Maloney, who is also university librarian at Rutgers added, “We are excited to work with Google to bring more of Rutgers’ collections to a worldwide audience,”

She added, “Digitising these materials will allow us to increase access to our collections, contribute to the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s goals for cooperative curation and preservation, and advance the local, national and global service missions of Rutgers University.”

Library partner manager for Google Books, Ben Bunnel echoed this sentiment, “We are delighted to welcome Rutgers to our roster of partner libraries.”

Bunnel added that Rutgers’ contribution represents a rich and deep addition to the Google Books project. This partnership will greatly assist in Google Books’ mission to make the world’s information more accessible and useful to all.

Through this initiative, Rutgers joins dozens of libraries around the world who have participated in the Google Books Library Project, including other libraries in the Big Ten Academic Alliance. It remains one of the largest cooperative ventures of its kind in higher education.

Associate Director of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, Robert Van Rennes explained the decision to participate in this partnership, “We chose to participate in the Google Books Library Project to preserve and promote access to historically significant print resources in our member libraries’ collections.”

The Big Ten Academic Alliance collection constitutes over 20% of all titles in North America’s print book collection.

Thus, Van Rennes believes that this partnership will be of benefit to everyone, anywhere in the world with access to the internet.

This initiative also aims to preserve the rich culture and history of Rutgers University. Other titles that have been identified for digitisation include publications by federal, state and city organisations ranging from the U.S. Geological Survey to the New Brunswick Free Public Library.

Literary classics by Jane Austen, Jorge Luis Borges, George Eliot, John Milton, Walt Whitman and several others are also included in the list of publications that will be digitised and made available online.