An estimated 800,000 books and manuscripts held at India’s esteemed University of Mysore are to be digitised by search engine colossus Google. One of the rarest treasures due for scanning is the “Arthasastra” a series of books on political thought and strategy which dates from around the fourth century BC.

University vice chancellor, J. Shashidhara Prasad explained that that the library was embarking on the digitisation partnership to “restore and preserve this cultural heritage for effective dissemination of knowledge.”

Google continues unabated in its attempts to digitise the world’s books and printed materials, despite trying to fend off multiple threats of legal action and criticism from angry copyright holders. Although Prasad confirmed the search engine organisation were keen to push the initiative, saying; “Google has offered to digitise these manuscripts as well as 700,000 other books free of cost. Google chief, Eric Schmidt, has already interacted with us and is ready to provide us expertise, software and even manpower.”

Naturally Google get something in return and can expect, “to link freely to the digitised materials once the necessary patenting of the information is completed” said Prasad.

The project is in a similar vein to Microsoft’s current partnership with the British Library in digitising scholarly works. A respected institute, the University of Mysore was the first of its kind in India’s Karnataka state, founded in 1916 by then Maharaja of Mysore, Sri Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, it is affiliated with 122 colleges and educates nearly 55,000 students who range from graduates to post-graduate and researchers.