Google to put one of the world's largest libraries online (AFP)

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Google announced a deal to make the books from the University of California library available online.

The agreement bolstered the Google Book Search project, a controversial campaign by the online search juggernaut to digitize all the written works in the world and put them on the Internet.

The state university system has more than 100 libraries on its 10 campuses and bills the aggregate collection as the largest research and academic library in the world.

"This means even more access to the great works of history and culture," the Mountain View, California, search engine said in a release.

"So a student, a teacher, a doctor or anyone in a remote corner of the world will be able to find information held on library shelves thousands of miles away in California simply by searching online."

Online information from copyrighted books will be limited to title, author, a few lines of text related to the query and where it could be bought or borrowed, according to Google.

"The academic enterprise is fundamentally about discovery," said John Oakley, chairman of the university system's academic senate and a law professor.

"This will contribute to it immeasurably by unlocking the wealth of information maintained within our libraries and exposing it to the latest that search technologies have to offer."

Other institutions that have signed on with Google's project include Harvard and Stanford universities and the US .

France's National Publishers' Union (SNE), which represents 400 publishers, has repeatedly condemned the library project and threatened legal action.

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