The deal sets Google up as the world's custodian of published content, with no one else even close, or likely to get close – Microsoft gave up its book-scanning programme a couple of years ago, while Europeana, the EU's digital library, has so far only managed to archive 5% of the Europe's digital content, half of this coming from just one country, France.
But somehow he managed to assemble and archive several thousand images, files, drawings, relics and objects.
In the days between his exile and her own, she managed to smuggle his entire archive, a vast trove of papers compiled over decades, from Moscow to Zurich.
Machines to play the old tapes are hard to come by, but the archive has managed to buy some from second-hand dealers and scavenge others from companies that no longer had any use for them.
But through the stewardship of two dedicated men over the past 35 years, the Municipal Archives has managed to grow an astonishing tenfold, as its tiny band of civil servants has rescued documents from sub-basements and trash bins.
However, after performing an exhaustive search of the Guardian's web archive, I have managed to source a 1599 review of a play by W Shakespeare entitled The Tragedy of Arthur.
My biographies of Livingstone and Stanley had given me a head start and I knew a lot of background history, as well as broadly what was to be found in most of the relevant archives, so I managed to write the book in just over three years, despite reading a mass of new manuscript material on Speke, Burton and, to a lesser extent, Baker.
From your archives you have managed to find a Joan Didion piece to reprint from long ago.
Activists managed to track down hundreds of pictures in archives and private collections and published them in a popular book.
In this instance, the public managed to change Google's mind and stopped the mass deletion of a unique digital archive but the situation raises concerns about data under Google's control, including the unique archive of Google Books.
Although the process of input might be lengthy for larger documents, the storage, search and emailing capabilities will make your material easier to manage, easier to archive and much easier to share with others.
