Library project to scan 60 million documents.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: UP FRONT: News, Trends & Analysis - Boston Public Library - Publicresource.org - Internet Archive

A $6 million digital library partnership that includes the Boston Public Library and two nonprofit organizations will make more than 60 million government documents available at no cost via the Internet.

The project, which will include making digital copies of the library's paper-based government documents collection, will require two years and millions of pages of government hearings and related publications to be hand-scanned, according to a New York Times report.

Publicresource.org, a nonprofit group that advocates public access to government records, and the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based digital library, are assisting the Boston Public Library in the project. The founders of the two organizations, Carl Malamud and Brewster Kahle, told the Times the project is being financed initially by $500,000 in grants--$250,000 from a foundation established by Kahle and his wife and a matching grant from the Omidyar Network, a support organization created by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay.

The first phase of the project is to scan 50 years of congressional hearings (1936-1986) held by the Boston Public Library. Documents will be scanned using special scan stations developed by the Internet Archive and should be complete this year. If additional funding is found, the project will then move to phase two: scanning 60 million pages from sources including the Congressional Record and the Federal Register.

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