A 2003 grant helped the nonprofit Internet Archive to expand its core activity of preserving the Internet. Libraries around the world, including the Library of Congress and the British Library, have now come to rely on the Archive to perform archival services. The success of the Archive in one major domain of digital preservation, namely the Internet, has led to consideration of the Archive becoming a universal library. The Archive would provide access not only to old versions of the Internet itself, but also to digitized books, film and video, still images, audio, and software. The vision of an online universal library received tremendous impetus in December 2004 when the Google company announced its aim to develop a commercial realization of this concept, supported by a variety of fees. Although several libraries, including Harvard and Stanford, agreed to contribute to the Google archive, there were concerns about relying on a sole system operated by a private for-profit entity. The best-placed organization to unite the holders of content in a counterpart massive digitization effort built around the concept of open access is the Internet Archive. This grant enables the Archive to take steps to build the universal digital library, beginning with an archive of millions of books. The project requires more than $200 million in funds by 2010, to be obtained from other foundations, libraries and other archival institutions around the world, and from private sources. The best technical advice suggests that today's technology for scanning, data compression, storage, and distribution puts the goal within reach. The main hurdles are funding, political will, cooperation from libraries, copyright restrictions, and the competing commercial effort. Project Director: Brewster Kahle, Digital Librarian.

This grant was made from an appropriation approved by the Board of Trustees for the development of five on-demand book machines that can print, trim, and bind from a digital file a library-quality paperback in minutes, on demand, with minimum human intervention, for about a penny a page. Such an experimental machine has been running for three years and has printed 10,000 books thus far. Once a commercial version is produced by a manufacturer, it will be beta tested before testing in the marketplace. The five machines will be placed in New York City public libraries where they will serve foreign language readers in Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and possibly Hindi and Korean. Emphasis on books in these languages will likely lead to more accepting reactions to this development from American publishers, who mainly do not stock such foreign language books. After securing agreement with Russian and other foreign publishers, who are expected to welcome having additional outlets for their books, selected foreign titles will be digitized and made available to foreign language readers in New York who cannot now buy or borrow these books. There are many obstacles to success, but the technology is worth perfecting since on-demand books would serve a positive social good, ultimately allowing access to very large numbers of books and having the potential to make the world's storehouse of knowledge available to everyone. Also, piloting the effort in New York City's public libraries and supplying foreign titles not now available will serve a significant underserved population as the entire concept is realistically tested. Project Director: Jason Epstein, publisher and LLC member.