BGA Book Project

THE DREAM To professionally scan all out of print UK gliding books and create an eBook library. The intention is that the BGA will have an accessible, catalogued hard copy gliding library and eventually the BGA website will host all the scanned UK gliding magazines and the eBook library. Both magazines and eBooks will be searchable and freely available.

THE HISTORY. Over 150 unique UK gliding books have been collected by Wally Kahn over many years and it is the heart of the ‘UK Gliding Library’ that is now being assembled. Wally generously decided to gift his collection to the BGA so that it could be combined with the BGA collection.

The BGA are delighted to accept this opportunity. The original BGA collection is still stored in boxes and was gifted to the BGA by Doc Slater who collected over 400 books from world wide sources, mainly on aviation related subjects with a proportion purely on gliding. The BGA is planning to create an accessible library which will be held in the BGA headquarters at Leicester.

Combining the collections, plus a gift of a few more to the project, takes the UK gliding book collection up to 169 unique books. Having established a physical and comprehensive library the next target is to scan as many of these UK books that are out of print as is possible and convert them into eBooks.

The BGA has agreed to host them on their BGA/Sailplane and Gliding website when they upgrade their website facility. The aim is to make them easily searchable, freely available (within copyright rules) and retain them for posterity.

Further information about  this unique and valuable project can be found at :