October 14, 2010 – Reaching across the waters, the French national library BNF has chosen Microsoft’s Bing to improve access to the 1.25 million documents on the Gallica digital library. It covers works that are in the public domain.
We found this news on Telecompaper.com in their article, “Microsoft Bing to index French national library holdings” The non-exclusive deal covers indexing rather than digitizing and will multiply Gallica’s audience and thereby contribute to the worldwide dissemination of France’s cultural richness.
“It is the first deal of its kind for Microsoft, and is a decisive step in realizing the company’s vision of internet search in France in collaboration with local institutions and partners, respecting their identity, intellectual property and the development of the knowledge society”, said Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer.
It is a one year, renewable agreement without any financial component. They expect that BNF will probably launch a call for partners to digitize its holdings, particularly newspapers from the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. Nice trendsetter.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
