Million Book Project — Vivid Example of International Cooperation

Abstract

The article analyses the conceptual idea, stages of formation, organizational and technological features of the Million Book Project. This is the original version of the multilingual full-text electronic library, the first stage of the more extensive program of Universal Digital Library. The aim of the project was to digitize one million books by 2007 and to provide free access to them. The project is interesting, firstly, as an early productive experience in creating a compact electronic library to optimize the educational process, and secondly, as an example of broad effective international cooperation in organization of information resources. The collection was based on “Books for College Libraries”, which is a special collection of educational scientific literature (50,000 titles), electronic copies of which were provided by the non-profit, membership, computer library service OCLC (Online Computer Library Center). The author considers the Project as an original model of international division of labour in the development of library information resources, when the scanning centres in India and China took over most of the work on digitization of books, including from the United States, and the Carnegie Mellon University, in cooperation with other American Universities, provided them with the necessary equipment and staff training. The Million Book Project is based on the original full participation, along with the library of Carnegie Mellon University and libraries of other American universities, of digital collections of India, China and Egypt. One of the strengths of the project is cooperation with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), aimed at combating hunger, as well as with the National Agricultural Library of the United States in digitizing specialized literature on the modernization of agricultural, forestry and fish farming practices. The article also notes the significance of the project in the field of organizational and technological solutions related to the formation of the electronic library: it served as a test base for applied research in the field of improving scanning techniques, optical character recognition and automatic translation. The important advantage of the Million Book Project is the ultimate decentralization of powers in the field of acquisition of the collection, resulted in including into the project orbit of the unique monuments of history and culture of the East. The digitization and inclusion in the electronic library of the cultural treasures for the first time makes them potentially available to the global audience.