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The Million Book Project, an international scheme led by Carnegie Mellon University, was started in 2002 with the aim of creating a digital book repository accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

"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, professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon.

"This project brings us closer to the ideal of the Universal Library: making all published works available to anyone, anytime, in any language. The economic barriers to the distribution of knowledge are falling."

Digital book projects are all the rage at the moment with Google, <

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Microsoft, and even the EU creating online repositories, however, according to Carnegie Mellon, the Million Book Project represents the world's largest, university-based digital library of freely accessible books.

"Protecting and preserving texts is a major goal", says Pan Yunhe, the leader of the Million Book Project in China. "Paper gets old and brittle, so books soon become so delicate that no one can read them without damaging them. Artwork fades."

"But once we have digitised texts and illustrations, we can keep them in circulation indefinitely. And by storing them at multiple sites, we can minimise the risk that they be destroyed."

"Digital libraries constitute an essential part of the future of the developing world," comments Ismail Serageldin, director of Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which is contributing to the effort.

"This requires that we approach conditions governing copyright, digital archiving and scientific databases with a view to creating two-tier systems of access to information that would allow access to such data from developing countries for a nominal fee or for free."

Though the university claims its long time goal is to make the books freely available, about half of the current collection is under copyright, meaning that only 10% of the books can be accessed at no cost.