Library of Congress "Rare Book" digitization project

After receiving a $3 million donation from Google, the library of Congress launched an initiative to build a World Digital Library (WDL). The WDL project was focused on digitizing “rare and unique cultural materials held in U.S. and Western repositories with those of other great cultures.” Along with books, the WDL covers documents, video, audio, manuscripts, etc. Funding and content comes from public and private partnerships, with both U.S. and international participation.

This was not their first digitization initiative. They digitized fragile materials in their American Memory project which launched into a Web site project and now includes more than 10 million materials.

Library of Congress inclusion policies for its digital collections require all items to be free of copyright, either because they fall into the public domain or they have become available due to special permission.

This information comes from [http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb051128-2.shtml]