Digital library surpasses initial goal of 1 million books (AP/CNN)

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Nearly a decade ago, computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University embarked on a project with an astonishingly lofty goal: Digitize the published works of humankind and make them freely available online.

The architects of the project said this week they have surpassed their latest target, having scanned more than 1.5 million books -- many of them in Chinese -- and are continuing to scan thousands more daily.

"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 computer science and robotics professor at the university who spearheaded the project.

The latest phase in the development of the so-called Universal Library, called the Million Book Project, began in 2002 after Reddy's team successfully scanned 1,000 books.

Much of the recent work has been carried out by workers at scanning centers in India and China, helped by $3.5 million in seed funding from the National Science Foundation and in-kind contributions from computer hardware and software makers.
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/11/29/digital.library.ap/index.html

http://www.archive.org/details/millionbooks

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page (an independent effort)