French Government and National Library of France (BNF) Announce New Partnerships to Digitize Books and Recordings

Note: The following info comes via an article in La Parisien, a French-language newspaper. We translated into English using Google Translate.

Here’s what we learned.

Partnership Number One

• Signed with ProQuest to digitize 70,000 French antique books dating from 1470 to 1700
• Agreement is part of the “Early European Books” project.
• Access: A selection of 3500 books, chosen by the BNF, will be immediately available via open access via BNF’s  digital library Gallica. More books will be available moving forward.

Partnership Number Two

• Signed with Believe Digital and Memnon Archiving Services
• Plans to digitize 200,000 33 1/3 and 78 rpm vinyl records
• Over 700,000 tracks (in many genres) will become available on major digital music distribution services

The full text article is available here. Google Translate version here.

Here’s the official news release (in French)