A hall in the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek

According to an Agence France Presse report, “Austria‘s national library said Tuesday it has struck a 30-million-euro deal with US Internet giant Google to digitise 400,000 copyright-free books, a vast collection spanning 400 years of European history.”

The library is delighted with the deal. Johanna Rachinger, head of the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek (ONB), told the AFP that this was an “important step,” and commented that “there are few projects on such a scale elsewhere in Europe.”

The Austrian library project concerns one of the world’s five biggest collections of 16th- to 19th-century literature, totalling some 120 million pages.

Says the AFP, “Under the deal, Google will cover the costs of digitising the collection — set at around 50 to 100 euros (60 to 120 dollars) per book — a sum the library says it was unable to raise without external funding. The ONB will pay to prepare the books for scanning, store the book data, and provide public access to it. Scanning work is to begin in 2011 in Bavaria in southern Germany, and is expected to last around six years.”

Rachinger hopes that the project will help preserve some the works. Under the terms of the agreement, Google will not have exclusive use of the material. Books will be available through the ONB website, Google Books library at books.google.fr and its European counterpart www.europeana.eu.

Google has faced the ire of several countries who oppose Google’s scanning of their libraries, such as France and Germany. But they seem to have a willing partner in Austria.