Amazon teams up with British Library for rare books

LONDON - Amazon.co.uk has teamed up with the British Library so that information on rare, antiquarian and out of print books can be made available to buy online.

The British Library has added details of more than 2.55m books to the Amazon.co.uk books catalogue, with 1.7m of these dated before the 1970 introduction of ISBN.

The aim is that Amazon.co.uk customers will benefit from the increased selection, while Amazon.co.uk sellers of used, specialist and antiquarian booksellers will now be able to list a far wider selection of their titles on Amazon.co.uk.

The agreement has expanded the number of titles available for third-party sellers to list against where Amazon.co.uk doesn't provide a retail offering. All of these titles will be available through Amazon.co.uk's third-party Marketplace service. Marketplace is a feature that allows customers to buy and sell new, used and collectable items from third-party sellers.

Old editions on the site range from famous authors such as Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone With The Wind' (1961), Enid Blyton's 'The Enchanted Wood' (1951) and 'The Big Noddy Book' (1967), to titles such as Luther Hess Waring's 'Political Theories of Martin Luther' (1968) and Ivor Herbert's 'The Queen Mother's Horses' (1967).

In addition, more obscure titles dating back to 1570 include Italian sheet music and old English ballads and poems. An Amazon.co.uk spokeswoman said: "Now we have catalogue information for books that we didn't have before. We have the information and we're providing the facility to buy."

Natalie Ceeney, director of operations and services at the British Library said: "The Library's alliance with Amazon.co.uk is a wonderful way to make our catalogue data relevant and available to an even wider audience. Our bibliographic catalogues are second-to-none and we are delighted that Amazon.co.uk will be using them to underpin and support the Marketplace service."

Greg Hart, director for Amazon.co.uk's media products, added: "Amazon aims to be the place where you can find and discover anything you want to buy online and our alliance with the British Library is a clear demonstration of this strategy."

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