Mlilion book project: participation of Indian Institute of Astrophysics Library

Abstract

Million Book Project (MBP) (2001-2007) aims to digitize at least one million books and offer them to everyone around the world, free-ta-read on the Internet. This is a co11aborative effort by fifteen partners from China, India and United States. There are many Digital Library Projects initiated all over the world in the libraries. Most of these projects are carried out within particular libraries or archiving & preservation departments in the universities. In these digitization projects focus of the contents to be digitized, rests on the availability of the documents within the concerned libraries and also they are need-based efforts for future reference. Whereas MBP is envisaged as a global effort, where the contents required for digitization are contributed by all the participants from China, India and United States. This is in support of the goals of member participants to democratize and share knowledge locally and internationally. The funding for equipment and training has been received from the U.S. government to establish the digitization centers in China and India. thus taking care of the technical labor support for this project. As one of the participating centers from India, our library at Indian Institute of Astrophysics has agreed to contribute towards the collection development and also the process of digitization. In this proposal we intend to raise the issues concerning our Institute's contribution towards the collection development and also the importance of the contents selection from a special library towards this international project.