Google To Digitize Indian Palm Leaves

Google digitizes books on a fairly regular basis, but it’s not every day that manuscripts made of palm leaves join the “to-do” pile.  That’s the case, however, at the University of Mysore in India, where over 800,000 documents are set to be brought into the twenty-first century.

There’s no telling when the job will be finished, but Google’s not exactly billing the university by the hour.  “Google has offered to digitize these manuscripts as well as 700,000 other books free of cost,” said J. Shashidhara Prasad, Mysore’s vice chancellor, in an interview with