While Google and Microsoft race to digitize every book they can get their hands on, the Internet Archive has been working on a less controversial project by avoiding copyrighted works.

The Open Library aims to reproduce the experience of reading a book online. Right now there are only a handful of public domain titles available, with many more coming in the next few months. The website is currently in demo mode, with an official launch date in October.

Flipping through the scanned book images is about as close an experience as you're likely to get to reading a dusty old novel without that musty book smell. You can even see library notations and used book prices penciled into the images. It takes a moment for some of the pages to load, and it's arguable whether it's more efficient to read these books in image or text form.

Each book is searchable. Since the books are in the public domain, you can also download each title as a PDF file, or send it to Lulu to order your own personal bound and printed edition. There's also a listen link next to each book. Click it for an audiobook version when available.

[via Future of the Book]

The Open Library is a colossal undertaking to put every book on the planet within its catalog. Since no building would be large enough to house the collection, this library is on the web with access to everyone. And to remove all borders to free access, the code for Open Library is open source. Another big bonus - no more annoying shushers.

The Open Library concept is modeled after Wikipedia, a resource where users in any country can have access, are encouraged to curate the catalog, contribute to its content, and have free access to all its data. This library, once it is built, will be a very beautiful thing.

Open Library is partnering with the Internet Archive's book scanning project, so that you can read the full text of all the out-of-copyright books they've made available. It will link to places where each book could be bought, borrowed, or downloaded and provide reviews and references on the books themselves.

The library has accomplished a great deal in acquiring the Library of Congress' catalog, courting publishers to get more data, building a super capacity database to store the millions of entries and a new wiki.

For Open Library to get to the next level, it will need lots of volunteers to believe and build it up. The site is in demo now, but there's a guided tour which helps you visualize how it will all shake out.

[via Slashdot]