Library of Congress, Harvard Library Going Digital with Help from Google
The Library of Congress is launching an ambitious project called World Digital Library, "an online collection of rare books, manuscripts, maps, posters, stamps and other materials from its holdings and those of other national libraries that would be freely accessible for viewing by anyone, anywhere with Internet access," reports The Washington Post. Material in national libraries on five continents are to be included in the project, said James H. Billington, head of the Library of Congress. Google has pledged $3 million to the project. "To me, this is about preserving history and making it available to everyone," said Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Meanwhile, in Cambridge, Harvard University's libraries are going digital in partnership with Google's Book Search project, The New York Times reported yesterday. Harvard has more than 90 libraries, the digitizing of even the first 40,000 volumes seems daunting, but Google may have developed a new scanning technology that will enable them to meet their proposed deadline of six years.