The Million Book Project based at Carnegie Mellon University announced today that it has scanned 1.5 million books that are available for free on the Internet.

The project, begun in 2002, is now scanning 7,000 books a day at centers in China, India and Egypt. Because of the agreements with governments in those countries, most of the books scanned so far are in Chinese and various Indian languages. Of the total, 366,000 are in English.

Ultimately, the project hopes to digitize all 100 million books that have been published and be able to translate any book into the language of the reader's choice. The Million Book Project can be accessed at www.ulib.org

More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.