Digitising the British Library

The British Library in London contains 150 million books. Searching through them is time consuming, only one person can read any given book at a time, and they age and eventually fall apart. So the British Library – like many others in the world – is digitising its vast collection and making it available on the internet.

Digitisation is particularly important for very old books like the one written by Leonardo da Vinci between 1478 and 1518. The Codex Arundel contains his thoughts and theories on a variety of subjects, along with a selection of sketches. Internet access will cost in the region of 11 euros.

So far, only one percent of the library’s books have been digitised, but the British Library’s website already contains 40 million digitised pages, and gets 10 million visitors a year.

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