University Complutense of Madrid and Google to Make Hundreds of Thousands of Books Available Online

University Complutense of Madrid and Google to Make Hundreds of Thousands of Books Available Online

Browsing the library stacks of the University Complutense of Madrid is like taking a trip through the great moments of Spanish and Latin American literature with Miguel de Cervantes, Quevedo, Calderón, Sor Juana de la Cruz, Garcilaso de la Vega and many more.

Now, those authors’ great works will be accessible to everyone around the world, as the University Complutense of Madrid becomes the first Spanish-language library to join the Google Books Library Project. Book lovers and researchers from Australia to Argentina, and South Africa to Spain, will be able to find out whether, as Cervantes wrote, “the pen is the tongue of the mind,” or as Calderón claimed, “life is but a dream.”

Working together, Google and the University Complutense of Madrid will digitise the university’s hundreds of thousands of public domain works, so that anyone, at anytime will be able to view, browse, read, and even download the full texts from the library’s historic and special collections. The library of the Complutense University of Madrid is the largest university library in Spain.

“Out of copyright books previously only available to people with access to Madrid’s Complutense University Library, or the money to travel, will now be accessible to everyone with an Internet connection, wherever they live,” said Carlos Berzosa, Chancellor of the Complutense University of Madrid. “We are quite literally opening our library to the world. The opportunities for education are phenomenal and we are delighted to be working with Google on this project.”

Read the complete Press Release