A News.com report by Candace Lombardi on the ongoing digitization occurring at Carnegie Mellon and other universities to develop The Universal Digital Library or what others refer to as the Million Books Project.

See Also: Second Story (via AP).

Here’s a list of other libraries in China, India, and Egypt working on the project:

China
* Beijing University
* Chinese Academy of Science
* Fudan University
* Ministry of Education of China
* Nanjing University
* State Planning Commission of China
* Tsinghua University
* Zhejiang University

Egypt
* Bibliotheca Alexandrina

India
* Arulmigu Kalasalingam College Of Engineering
* Goa University
* Indian Institute of Information Technology - Allahabad
* Indian Institute of Science
* International Institute of Information Technology - Hyderabad
* Shanmugha Arts,Science,Technology & Research Academy
* Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams
* Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation
* University of Pune

For one, the UDL isn’t interested in how many users it gets. Though its abundant amount of content and easy-to-download texts may make it attractive to e-book users looking for free compatible content, the library offers a large number of obscure works likely interesting to only a niche group of academics or hobbyists.

“If your subject is ancient archery and you have trouble because it’s not something stocked at Barnes & Noble, you can find it at the Universal Digital Library,” Shamos said.

Most importantly, he said, this is an undertaking of preservation for all humankind.

So, where else can you find digitized books beyond what Google and Microsoft are doing with their Library Projects. Here are several places to visit:

See Also: 2004 Video of Book Scanning Robot at University of Toronto

Let’s review some projects, services, and where to find digitized books:
+ Online Books Page
Thousands and thousands of FREE, full text books from many sources. If you browse the “What’s New” page, you’ll see links to freely available full text books — both old and new — being digitized by organizations like:

+ American Historical Association
+ John F. Kennedy Library
+ The Online Library of Liberty
+ LibraryIreland
+ Rice University Press
+ Internet Sacred Text Archive
+ Doctortee.net
+ University of Virginia Digital Collections
+ Making of America (U of Michigan), Over 12,000 Volumes
+ Illinois Institute of Technology

And these are just the tip of the iceberg.

In other words, many organizations and LIBRARIES, are digitizing books.

Info pros should know about a variety of sources. Here are a few more:
+ International Children’s Digital Library
Both old and new books. Free Access. Fun for all!!!

+ OpenLibrary.org
The Open Content Alliance dbase beta.

+ Internet Archive’s Open Content Alliance Grows to 80 Contributing Libraries
One project comes from the University of Illinois, Illinois Harvest. Numerous books by and about Abraham Lincoln.

+ Digital Book Index
130,000 titles listed, over 100,000 free. Also note the list of organizations providing content in the right rail.

+ World Public Library
Over 500,000 titles, searchable, available for a very small yearly fee.

+ Internet Archive–Texts
Comprises several projects and has the same leadership as the Open Content Alliance. Also, many titles are available in several formats, from simple text to HTML to PDF. Also look for the click-book format. Very cool! Over 300,000 texts.

+ UK: Full text books and cool technology from the Turning the Pages service at The British Library.
+ UK: British Library books go digital

+ Shakespeare Full Text and Full Image on the Web
Some gorgeous work.

Want More? Projects from Around the Globe? Dave Mattison’s British Columbia International Digital Library is the place to begin.
Start browsing here and here. Wow!!!

Publishers Get in the Act: The National Academies Press Offers Thousands of Full Text Books at No Charge to Search/Read (Unlimited Amount) at No Charge.

It’s Not All Books: Sheet Music Digitization (via Duke University)

ebrary Discover
Over 20,000 new full text books. Free to read online. Pay to print (by the page).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 1:39 am and is filed under Digitization Projects, Info Management and Retrieval, Libraries and Librarianship, Scholarly Publishing, Search News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.