Google, the leading internet search engine has made agreements with major universities and research institutions in the US, and Oxford University in England, to convert their libraries into digital files, freely searchable on the internet. It means the huge intellectual resources of Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Michigan and the New York Public Library will be available and searchable worldwide.
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The US Library of Congress has announced a plan involving libraries in the US, Canada, Egypt, China and the Netherlands to create an open digital archive on the internet of 1 million books, the first 70,000 volumes to be available by next April.
The more online libraries such as this there are the better. Not just for the obvious benefits of providing access to the massive volume of history in these libraries to everyone in the world, but for what it will mean for copyright.
When historians, students and the general public get used to being able to access this information, the preasure will increase on copyright law to move more content into the Public Domain.
As the law stands (in the US, and now in Australia thanks to our Free Trade Agreement), copyright is assumed on any content created 70 years ago+. This 70 year limit has been increased constantly to prevent Mickey Mouse and his crew from falling into the Public Domain. As a result, millions of other copyrighted works are prevented from entering the Public Domain, leaving so much history rotting away in libraries or in the private collections of fans.
What's more, with so much available in online libraries the public will wonder why they can't view everything online. Potentially this may force the issue of online book borrowing, an issue strongly linked with the Napster/Kaaza/Grocster music trading lawsuits.
Hopefully we'll start to see copyright law brought into the 21st Century, to keep up with history preservation and publication.
But so far it continues to head backwards.