Books to eBooks


I recently discovered an interesting service that I wish to share with you: Books to eBooks. It is a European initiative called Digital on Request.

By now, 25 libraries participate in this initiative. Through it, you can get digitized copies of almost any book ever printed in Europe before the year 1900 (for reasons of Copyright protection, the service is limited to very old books only).

Here in Switzerland, the Swiss National Library, a branch of the Swiss Government, the Swiss counterpart to the U.S. Library of Congress, already participates in this initiative. Others, such as the Zentralbibliothek of Zurich, are currently considering to join as well.

I tried that service out recently by ordering a copy of a book printed here in Switzerland in 1888 through the Swiss National Library.

The book hadn't been scanned yet (it had never been ordered so far), and thus, I shall have to pay for the service. They charge 30 Cents per page, but for this price, they not only scan each page of the book to PDF, but also pass it through OCR software to make it machine-searchable. Since the book that I ordered has 52 pages, they'll charge me CHF 15.60 (about $15) for a digital machine-searchable copy of the book. For an additional CHF 9.60, I could have received a freshly printed and paper-bound copy of the book (print on demand) in the mail, but I didn't order it, because the machine-searchable PDF file is in fact much more useful.

My order will be processed within 10 working days, and I shall receive an email message, when the book is ready for download. After that, the book will be added to the digital library for anyone to use.

Not bad! Not bad at all!

How can they offer this service at such a low price? Evidently, the service is heavily subsidized. After all, the Swiss National Library is a branch of our Government. Thus, I pay for this service not only directly, but also indirectly through my tax Francs.

Yet, I do so gladly ... I much rather spend my tax money on means to preserve my own cultural heritage than on buying bombs to destroy someone else's (!!)