“The Million Book Project, an international venture led by Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, Zhejiang University in China, the Indian Institute of Science in India and the Library at Alexandria in Egypt, has completed the digitization of more than 1.5 million books, which are now available online.”

Since it’s inception in 2002, the Universal Library (www.ulib.org) has been busily scanning books and manuscripts, both out-of-print and contemporary. The books are available in 20 different languages and represent about 1% of the worlds books.

One possible problem is that your humble moderator went in for a quick peek and chose to browse their astronomy listings. The listings started with books starting with A of course, but back to 1894. However there are options that allow searching and the are also categorized in 50 year increments to locate the information you’re looking for more easily.

One has to wonder where this will end up in the future. How many times have sci-fi authors dreamed over the years of having the knowledge of humanity’s science and technology computerized and available for instant access.

I guess the moral here is: Beware information overload in 1.5 million books