World libraries: Digitized Gallica collection from National Library of France now on Wikisource

The National Library of France (Bibliothèque nationale de France, BNF) has signed an agreement with Wikimedia France on providing free access to its digitized Gallica collection via Wikisource.

The aim of Wikisource project, which was mounted in 2003, is to make copies of literary works, currently owned by the government and copyright-free, public domain (50,000 texts). BNF is supposed to offer Wikisource about 1,400 texts in French.

Wikimedia France is going to acquire expertise of Wikipedia encyclopedia and enable its users to correct old texts, digitized by BNF. Comparison of image and automatic recognized text will allow to detect mistakes, telling copies from original texts.