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Touch & Turn Press Release
PRESS RELEASE - 15 April 2004
UNIQUE ACCESS TO EUROPEAN LITERARY TREASURES FROM AN ONLINE LIBRARY
Turn the pages in the Icelandic Edda from the 14th Century or read the first edition of Endymion by John Keats, without actually touching the original work. On April 22nd T&T Virtual Library at www.touchandturn.com will present, for the first time in history, complete digital facsimiles of literary treasures from all over Europe accessible to the general public.
The vision - to create a virtual library of digital facsimiles of the most precious works in Europe has now become reality. The gateway to the T&T Virtual Library: www.touchandturn.com has opened, where both researchers and a worldwide public can access unique books and manuscripts without risking damage to the original works.
During the past year the company Touch and Turn has collaborated with libraries from all over Europe on the EC project "Mediation of rare books over the Internet". The project involves partners, eight in all, from Austria, Germany, Greece, Italy and Sweden, all of whom have digitised works in their collections using T&T technology. The National Library of Rome, the University Library in Graz, Uppsala University Library and the Keats-Shelley House are some of the participants who have chosen to digitise titles, the theme of which is, broadly, travel – books digitised include travel journals, itineraries, maps and educational literature.
The project was initiated by Touch and Turn, who had a new vision for digital publishing and facilitating public access to rare, fragile and valuable material in European collections. The technology gives the user the experience of turning the pages of an original document, with zoom and translation capabilities, as well as a critical commentary, in an unlimited number of languages.
"Our technology has generated an enormous interest, both among cultural institutions and end users. Up to now we have been producing exhibition version and CD ROM Virtual Library Editions, but now we see that the Internet will play a key role in making this part of our cultural heritage accessible, not least in education. Our goal is to create a Virtual Library in which the 50 most important books and manuscripts from each European country are represented. The collection that we proudly present today shows that this can be achieved, and that we are advancing towards our objective", says Mikael Karlsson, CEO and one of the company founders.
In order to access the library collection the user has to download the "T&T Library Reader", a free program giving access to the complete Virtual Library database, as well as a personal My library section. During the launch period almost all of the material will be available for free, but gradually the library will become a pay-as-you go service where revenues earned will go to the book-lending institutions themselves. In this way the libraries and museums can generate a return on their digitisation costs while making available their rare, and internationally important, collections.
For any further information please contact:
Mikael Karlsson, CEO Touch and Turn
Telephone: 08-724 772, 0708-724 772
E-mail: mikael.k@touchandturn.com
Information about the EC project:
www.touchandturn.com/eTEN.htm