Giving new life to out-of-print books: when publishers' and libraries' interests meet.

The library of the Université libre de Bruxelles and Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles (EUB), the University's publishing imprint, have recently agreed to collaborate to provide free online access to recent out-of-print books published by EUB. The e-books are available on the Digithèque website, a collection of digital copies of printed books created by the library. This initiative is valuable for the scientific community and the general public who can freely access the books online, for the authors whose books have been digitized and widely disseminated, and for the publisher whose collections become more visible on the Internet, thereby generating more traffic on its website and potentially increasing sales of its other books. Around 20 books have been made available online so far. This article describes the context of the agreement, how the collaboration operates, the options of file conversion vs. book scanning, issues relating to copyright and users' rights, how access is provided to the digital copies, and future collaborative projects of the library and EUB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]