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Deal on online book access

London: Software giant Microsoft said on Friday that it has signed a deal to scan 100,000 books from the British Library and put them online.

Readers will be able to search through around 25 million pages of material next year without having to visit the library in London or pay any fee.

Microsoft initially is investing $2.5 million in the project, but both sides say there are plans to digitise more titles in the future.

Microsoft and the British Library have stressed that they would be choosing books only from the older end of the library's vast collection of 13 million titles, as these have long fallen out of copyright. — AP

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