Source: The Hindu
(http://www.hinduonnet.com/2007/11/29/stories/2007112958412200.htm)
All those books online
Major digital library project led by Indian-origin Professor
Professor Raj Reddy
PITTSBURGH: Nearly a decade ago, computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon
University embarked on a project with an astonishingly lofty goal: digitise the
published works of humankind and make them freely available online.
The architects of the Universal Library project said on Tuesday they had
surpassed their latest target, having scanned more than 1.5 million books and
are continuing to scan thousands more daily. Most of the books scanned are in
the Chinese language.
Access to all
Anyone who can get on the Internet now has access to a collection of books
the size of a large university library, said Raj Reddy, a Professor of
Computer Science and Robotics at the university who led the project.
Much of the recent work in the Million Book Project has been carried out by
workers at scanning centres in India and China, helped by $3.5
million in seed funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation and in-kind
contributions from computer hardware and software makers.
The U.S., China and India each have contributed $10 million to the project,
undertaken with partners at Chinas Zhejiang University, the Indian Institute
of Science in Bangalore, and Egypts Library at Alexandria.
At least half the books are out of copyright or scanned with the permission
of copyright holders. Excerpts of copyright-protected works are available,
though the organisers expect complete texts to become available eventually.
Other projects
The project is not the first of its kind. Online search engine operator
Google and software giant Microsoft have begun similar endeavours, though
Carnegie Mellon representatives say theirs is the largest university-based
digital library of free books and that its purpose is non-commercial.
It is a step toward the creation of an online library that would make
traditionally published books available to all, said Professor Reddy.
The economic barriers to the distribution of knowledge are falling, he said
in a statement.
Michael Shamos, a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon and a
copyright lawyer working on the project, said the librarys mission included
making vast amounts of information freely available and preserving rare and
decaying texts, among other things.
Some declined
Books have been borrowed for scanning from institutions and individuals
worldwide, though institutions in Europe declined to participate, he said. The
library so far has books published in 20 languages, including 970,000 in
Chinese, 360,000 in English, 50,000 in Telugu and 40,000 in Arabic.
On the Net, the Universal Digital Library is at http://www.ulib.org/AP
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