The AP reports that Italy and Google have agreed to digitize pre-1868 books:
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.
The Italian libraries already had embarked on their own project to put their collections online, and so far digital catalogues of some 285,000 book titles and other information have been created.
The BBC notes that “Up to one million antiquarian books” will be scanned and that the deal was welcome by some libraries because of budgetary constraints. It also notes difficulties Google has had with other European countries.
(h/t Jeremy Dibell at Philobiblos)
