Google, Israel’s National Library team up to digitize books

The National Library of Israel says it will digitize 120,000 books for the first time as part of a historic collaboration with Google

The National Library of Israel says it’s working with Google to digitize 120,000 books from its extensive collection of Jewish texts and upload them to the internet for public use.

The library said in a statement this week that its contribution will significantly increase the percentage of Hebrew texts available on Google Books.

The National Library has already begun transporting 50,000 books to Google’s digitization center in Germany using climate-controlled shipping containers. Another 20,000 will be scanned in-house due to their rare or fragile nature.

Yoel Finkelman, a curator at the library, says the institution aims to enable “open, free, universal access to as many Jewish and Hebrew texts as possible.”