The British Library is making digital copies of over 40,000 classic books available for the iPad, the texts appearing in fully digitised form and complete with original page markings and drawings.
The works being offered date from the 18th and 19th centuries and include novels, poetry and historical accounts. Users will have to pay a monthly subscription of £1.99 to access the full collection.
The collection was originally digitised in a project funded by Microsoft and a further 25,000 completed books are expected to be made available through the app in future. Apple’s iPad was chosen to launch the service because its tactile interface was able to recreate the experience of flipping through the pages of real books.
Fully digitised texts consume much more storage space than traditional e-books, so the works are not downloaded to the iPad but are stored online. The British Library has also recently signed a deal with Google to digitise 250,000 public domain works.