Source: London Telegraph

Officials from Google and Italian culture officials said on Wednesday that the project is the first time Google Books and a culture ministry have had such a partnership.

Mario Resca, a Culture Ministry official, says the deal will help save the books' content forever.

Mr Resca said the 1966 Florence flood ruined thousands of books in the Tuscan city's library. He said digitising books from before 1868 will help spread Italian culture throughout the world.

Google will cover the costs of the scanning of the books, all of them out-of-copyright Italian works, including 19th-century literature and 18th-century scientific volumes.