The Million Book Project (or the Universal Library) was a book digitization project led by

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

School of Computer Science and University Libraries from 2007–2008. Working with government and research partners in India ( Digital Library of India) and

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, the project scanned books in many languages, using OCR to enable full text searching, and providing free-to-read access to the books on the web. , they have completed the scanning of 1 million books and have made the entire catalog accessible online.

Description

The ''Million Book Project'' was a

501(c)3 A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 50 ...

charity organization with various scanning centers throughout the world. By December 2007, more than 1.5 million books had been scanned, in 20 languages: 970,000 in Chinese; 360,000 in English; 50,000 in

Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode S ...

; and 40,000 in Arabic. Most of the books are in the public domain, but permission has been acquired to include over 60,000 copyrighted books (roughly 53,000 in English and 7,000 in Indian languages). The books are mirrored in part at sites in India, China, Carnegie Mellon, the Internet Archive, Bibliotheca Alexandrina. The books that have been scanned to date are not yet all available online, and no single site has copies of all the books that are available online. The million book project was a "proof of concept" that has largely been replaced by

HathiTrust HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally ...

, Google Book Search and the Internet Archive book scanning projects. The Internet Archive may have some books that Google does not (e.g.: ''The Poems of Robert Frost'' published after the end of 1922). The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Carnegie Mellon $3.63M over four years for equipment and administrative travel for the Million Book Project. India provided $25M annually to support language translation research projects. The

Ministry of Education in China The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China is a cabinet-level department under the State Council responsible for basic education, vocational education, higher education, and other educational affairs across the country. The Min ...

provided $8.46M over three years. The Internet Archive provided equipment, staff and money. The University of California, Merced Library funded the work to acquire copyright permission from U.S. publishers. The program ended in 2008.

Partner institutions

China

The institutions in China which are participants in this project include: *

Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China is a cabinet-level department under the State Council responsible for basic education, vocational education, higher education, and other educational affairs across the country. The Min ...

* Chinese Academy of Science * Fudan University * Nanjing University *

Peking University Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charter ...

* Tsinghua University * Zhejiang University * Northeast Normal University

India

The institutions in India which are participants in this project include: * Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore * International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad * Indian Institute of Information Technology,

Allahabad Allahabad (), officially known as Prayagraj, also known as Ilahabad, is a metropolis in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.The other five cities were: Agra, Kanpur (Cawnpore), Lucknow, Meerut, and Varanasi (Benares). It is the administrat ...

* Anna University, Chennai * Mysore University, Mysore * University of Pune, Pune * Goa University, Goa * Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams,

Tirupathi Tirupati is a major pilgrimage city in Tirupati district of Andhra Pradesh, India. Tirupati may also refer to: Andhra Pradesh, India * Tirupati district, a district in the state of Andhra Pradesh * Tirupati Temple, in Tirupati * Tirupati Municipa ...

* Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology & Research Academy, Tanjore *

Kalasalingam Academy of Research and Education Kalasalingam Academy of Research and Education (KARE), formerly Arulmigu Kalasalingam College of Engineering and Kalasalingam University, is a private deemed to be university located in Krishnankoil near Rajapalayam in Tamil Nadu, India. The ca ...

Srivilliputhur Srivilliputhur (), is a Municipality in Virudhunagar district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. As of 2011, the town had a population of 75,396. The most important landmark of Srivilliputhur is 11-tiered tower structure dedicated to the Vatapat ...

* Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation, Mumbai

United States

The institutions in the U.S. which are participants include: * Internet Archive * Indiana University *

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

* TriColleges ( Swarthmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr) * University of California, Berkeley * University of California, Merced * University of Pittsburgh * University of Washington

Europe

The institutions in the EU which are participants include: * Copenhagen University *

Aarhus University Aarhus University ( da, Aarhus Universitet, abbreviated AU) is a public research university with its main campus located in Aarhus, Denmark. It is the second largest and second oldest university in Denmark. The university is part of the Coimbra Gr ...

* Odense University
Denmark Virtual Library

Description

Partner institutions

China

India

United States

Europe

See also

References

External links