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Ajita Shashidhar

NEW DELHI, Sept. 24

INDIAN Institute of Science, Bangalore, in collaboration with the Carnegie Mellon University and the Government of China is going to launch a Web library, which, to start with, will have as many as 2,500 books on various subjects such as engineering, science journals as well as classics on the site.

The National Science Foundation and the Union Ministry of Science and Technology are funding the project.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr N. Balakrishnan, Chairman, Division of Information Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, said, "Since storage capacities have become cheaper, we are trying to digitise information for the posterity."

Mr Balakrishnan said that they have received high-speed scanners as donations, which can scan a 500-page book in two hours.

The books will be sourced from the libraries of various colleges across these three countries.

"To start with, we have begun scanning books which are more than 60 years old as they don't come under the Copyright Act," he said.

Talking about copyright, Mr Balakrishnan said that the collaboration has founded the Consortia for Compensating Creative Content, wherein the writer would be given a one-time payment by which he will not have copyright to the Web version.

Mr Balakrishnan said that a number of publishers have approached them for publishing their works on the Web site. "The publishers feel that a digitised version of their books will increase sales."

He also said that around one million books would be on the site by the end of the year.

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