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Washington, May 23 (ANI): As part of a partnership between Google, the University of California and the UC San Diego Libraries, the 100,000 volumes from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library, the world’s largest oceanography library, have been digitized and are being made accessible to public.

Since 2008, approximately 300,000 volumes and other materials have been digitized from UCSD’s International Relations & Pacific Studies Library, the East Asian Language Collection and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library.

To date, more than 2 million books from UC libraries have been digitized.

“Partnering with Google in this global effort will lead to much greater scholarly and public access to the rich, diverse and, in many cases, rare, materials at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library,” said Brian E. C. Schottlaender, The Audrey Geisel University Librarian at UC San Diego.

“Making this treasure trove of materials accessible to anyone with Internet access is a tremendous boon for scholars, students and interested members of the public.”

The Scripps Library’s collections cover subjects ranging from oceanography, marine biology, marine geology, marine technology, climate science and geophysics, with extensive resources in ecology, zoology, fisheries and seismology.

As the library has been around for more than a century, the digitisation process by Google will allow access to older works dating back to the 18th century in full-text, according to Peter Brueggeman, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library.

Some of the works, which laid the foundation for modern oceanography include a report on crustaceans (The Stalk-eyed Crustacea, Walter Faxon, 1895) collected on a U.S. expedition to central and South America and the Galapagos on the famous ship Albatross.

Another report is (The Fishes of the Swedish South Polar Expedition, Einar Lonnberg, 1905) documented the fishes collected on a famous Antarctic expedition, the Swedish South-Polar Expedition of 1901-1903 led by Otto Nordenskjold.

Other digitized works include- The Medusae, (1909) by the pioneering ocean researcher Henry Bigelow, the founding director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; The Echinoderm Fauna of Torres Strait: Its Composition and Origin (1921) by Harvard zoologist Hubert Lyman Clark; and The Land and Sea Mammals of Middle America and the West Indies by zoologist Daniel Giraud Elliot, one of the founders of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the American Ornithologists’ Union.

These early works will help scholars and teachers understand conditions and ecosystems of the past, which will consequently help them understand the future, understand the oceans, atmosphere and earth for the benefit of society and the environment.

One of the biggest advantages of going digital is that the reports will be preserved from any natural disaster such as an earthquake or fire.

The digitized books from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library and other materials from the UCSD Libraries are accessible via the Google Book Search index - using which readers will be able to view, browse and read the full texts online.

Since the Google Book Search Project’s inception in 2004, Google has digitized more than 12 million books from libraries and publishing partners throughout the world - with a goal to make all of the knowledge contained within the world’s books searchable and discoverable online.

The nine libraries that make up the UCSD Library system provide access to more than 7 million digital and print volumes, journals and multimedia materials to meet the knowledge demands of scholars, students and members of the public.

Each day, more than 7,300 people stream through one of the university’s nine libraries. The Libraries’ vast resources and services are accessed more than 87,500 times each day via the UCSD Libraries’ website. (ANI)