clipped from: news.yahoo.com 
PITTSBURGH - Nearly a decade ago, computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University embarked on a project with an astonishingly lofty goal: Digitize the published works of humankind and make them freely available online.
"Anyone who can get on the Internet now has access to a collection of books the size of a large university library," said Raj Reddy, a computer science and robotics professor at the university who spearheaded the project.
At least half the books are out of copyright or scanned with the permission of copyright holders. Excerpts of copyright-protected works are available, though organizers expect complete texts to become available eventually.
The United States, China and India each have contributed $10 million in cash and contributions to the project, undertaken with partners at China's Zhejiang University, India's Indian Institute of Science and Egypt's Library at Alexandria.