French national library in talks with Google

France's national library has entered negotiations with Google about digitising its holdings, a change in strategy linked to the high cost of putting books into digital format, writes La Tribune. Bibliotheque Nationale de France (BNF) deputy general director Denis Bruckmann said he expected the talks to come to a conclusion within a few months. It costs between EUR 0.12 and EUR 0.74 per page to convert books to digital, depending on format type and digitisation quality, according to the newspaper. If a deal with Google goes ahead, BNF would be France's second major library to strike a deal, after the library of Lyon. Telecompaper reported two years ago that BNF planned to digitise 300,000 works by 2010, raising the number of items available to nearly 400,000. The project had an estimated budget of EUR 26 million over three years. The entire contents of the digital library were intended to be free to consult by all internet users on an in-house developed website called Gallica. Since 2004, Google has struck partnerships with 29 of the world's biggest libraries, as well as 25,000 publishers, mainly in the university or professional sectors.