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Digitising the British Library

Posted on 17 Jan 2008 at 11:42

However, it's the task of reaching the living rooms of potentially millions of curious readers that's currently preoccupying the Library's technical team. Perhaps wary of the way the 1901 Census site was overwhelmed by sheer weight of demand upon its infamous launch, the Library is load-testing its website before publishing the digital collection. Microsoft, of course, should have no such problems - and by allowing its technology partner to host the online collection before it goes live, the British Library not only mitigates the risk of failure, but can also keep a lid on the bandwidth bills.

The digital collection also allows the Library to protect something that's far more valuable than the bandwidth: the books themselves. It claims the need to handle the original texts will be "reduced significantly"; even visitors to the Library's London headquarters will be able to search the collection via its knowledge-management system. "There's only a small proportion of our holding that we don't give access to for physical reasons," says Jensen. "But this [project] doesn't mean we won't give physical access to material in the future."

What it does mean, however, is that millions more of us will be able to discover rare, fragile and fascinating texts from the comfort of our web browsers. And if that's not a site worth bookmarking, what is?