The U-M Library has just put online its millionth digitized book. That’s one million out of the 7.5 million volumes in the library’s current holdings.
“Having over a million books in our collection digitized and online is a significant milestone,” says Paul Courant, University librarian. “It’s a big number. No one else has reached it. It means that we are on track to digitize our entire collection of bound volumes by early in the next decade. Many of our library’s strengths derive from the size and the scope of the collections. With a million books online and almost a million more digitized, we can become fully engaged in determining how best to use this remarkable and unique resource.”
Michigan’s MBooks program makes these volumes available to readers around the world, increasing use of the U-M Library at home and abroad. An average 60,000 pages are viewed every month and MBooks has been accessed from 92 countries.
The Michigan Digitization Project is a partnership with Google that involves the entire U-M collection. It also will provide full-text access to works that are in the public domain, creating new ways for users to search and access U-M Library content.
As a leader in digital archival and preservation efforts among research libraries, the library has been converting material for many years, Courant says, but the partnership with Google permits the library to accomplish the task faster and on a scale that could not have been achieved alone.
Leading the list of those most frequently used digitized online books is “Tis Pity She’s a Whore and The Broken Heart” (hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015030762267) by John Ford and “Football for Player and Spectator” by Fielding H.Yost (hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015002370743).
One of the more unusual digitized offerings is “Goops and How to Be Them; a Manual of Manners for Polite Infants Inculcating Many Juvenile Virtues Both by Precept and Example,” with 90 drawings by Gelett Burgess (hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015002651894).
The star of this digitization milestone, however, is “Maria Mitchell, life, letters and journals” (mirlyn.lib.umich.edu/F/?func=direct&doc_number=001475688). It is the one millionth book to be digitized and put online from the library’s collection.
“The unlimited ‘shelf space’ that is afforded by digital files enables access to specialized, niche interests,” says Suzanne Chapman, the user interface specialist for digital library efforts.
The Michigan Digitization Project can be found at www.lib.umich.edu/mdp/.
