Google has bagged yet another library. The US internet giant has reached an agreement with the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the national library of the Netherlands, for the digitisation of more than 160,000 books written in the 18th and 19th centuries. These works, which have ended up in the public domain, will be accessible on the sites of Google Books, the Bibliotheek and Europeana, the European digital library.

After examination of the draft agreement, the European Commission declared that it was in accordance with Community rules on competition and authors’ rights and that it positively welcomed this news, which broadens the accessibility of the works to all Europeans.

Google is moving forward on 12 million digitised works to date. In March 2009, the company secured the digitisation of one million books from the national libraries of Rome and Florence, and in June that of 400,000 works from the Austrian national library. In total, Google has convinced around forty European libraries. However, not all of these works are available to the general public due to disagreement over orphan works, among other things. Hence a draft report by the European Parliament on this issue, which will be examined after the summer break. Across the Atlantic, Google is making similar progress in university libraries: those of Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and California, the largest in the world, have rallied to the cause.

Google’s target of digitising 15 million works by the end of 2010 is therefore about to be achieved.