"Online library offers 1.5 million works and counting..."
http://tinyurl.com/53esjg
It looks like this library will cater to the esoteric in all of us
From the article:
"The Universal Digital Library, a book-scanning project backed by several major libraries across the globe, has completed the digitization of 1.5 million books and on Tuesday made them free and publically available.
The online library offers full text downloads of works that are in the public domain, or for which the copyright holder has been given permission to make available. Having the backing of prominent institutions such as the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, however, the collection goes far beyond the widely available classics, though those are there, too.
"You're not going to find over 900,000 works in Chinese on Google," said Michael Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and director of intellectual property for the Universal Digital Library (UDL).
In fact, there are many differences between the book-scanning projects that Google and even Microsoft are doing, and the UDL, according to Shamos..."