BookSurge, Kirtas collaborate to distribute historic books

Jun. 21, 2007
Charleston Regional Business Journal
By Daily Journal Staff
Charleston-based BookSurge, a subsidiary of Amazon.com Inc. and provider of print-on-demand services, and Kirtas Technologies, announced a partnership with universities and public libraries to preserve thousands of rare and inaccessible books from their collections and distribute them via BookSurge's Print-on-Demand service.

This collaboration, which will enhance the selection of rare and historic books for sale on Amazon.com and other retail channels, represents a breakthrough approach to digitization and preservation that will ensure the public will have access to these works indefinitely via print-on-demand capabilities.

This initiative will also help institutions fund their mission of preserving these literary collections by offering a revenue source from the sales of content these institutions own or that is in the public domain on Amazon.com. Kirtas will provide economical, nondestructive scanning technology. In addition to providing funding for their ongoing digitization efforts, the partnership gives libraries and universities complete control over what is being scanned in their collections.

Emory University, University of Maine, Toronto Public Library, and Cincinnati Public Library are the first organizations to enter into agreements with Kirtas to make their rare-book collections available to a vast readership.

"There are thousands of books that have been unavailable altogether or incredibly difficult to find and access, so we're thrilled to be making reproductions of these unique, collectible books available to millions of Amazon.com customers," said David Symonds, general manager, BookSurge. "And, by offering these works on Amazon.com and through other retail channels, it gives new generations an easy way to find books they never would have even known about, much less had access to. It's a winning solution for libraries, research institutions and customers." 		related information