THE entire collection of the world’s books, scholarly works and treasured manuscripts will soon form a vast online library free to anyone with a home computer, experts said yesterday, after a revolutionary move announced by Google, the internet search service.

Hailed as the first step in making all written information available online, Google has reached agreements with five of the world’s most celebrated libraries, including Oxford University’s Bodleian, to digitise more than 15 million books and make them freely accessible on the internet, a project that will take six years.

The scheme, which will initially cost about $10 (£5.50) per book, is the latest move in the stated ambition of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google’s founders, to make all information available to computer users.

Google, which received $27 billion (£14 billion) this summer when it went public and is the world’s largest and most popular search service, is financing the effort, which encompasses the massive and famous libraries at Stanford, Harvard and Oxford universities, as well as the University of Michigan and the New York Public Library.

The move is certain to trigger a race with Google’s main competitors, such as Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft, who will want to create their own online libraries.

The development heralds a new age of unprecedented free access to not only any book, but other printed works such as famous musical scores and ancient manuscripts.

“Within two decades, most of the world’s knowledge will be digitised and available, one hopes for free reading on the internet, just as there is free reading in libraries today,” Michael A. Keller, Stanford’s head librarian, said. Ronald Milne, the Bodleian’s acting head librarian, said that in terms of disseminating information, the development was as seminal an event as the invention of the printing press.

“It’s a revolution,” Mr Milne said. Referring to the Bodleian’s own copy of Johann Gutenberg’s Bible, the first real book to be produced using the technique of printing from moveable type which Gutenberg invented in the 1450s, Mr Milne added: “In terms of what Gutenberg’s invention was all about, enabling books to be disseminated cheaply, it is very much comparable to that.”

Each library has reached its own deal with Google. The Bodleian is making available nearly all its uncopyrighted works published in the 19th century, or up to 1.5 million of its eight million titles. It is a vast collection of fictional, art, political, and travel writings, including works by Dickens, Byron and Jane Austen.

But, Mr Milne said, in years to come, digitising the library’s entire contents, except those works too fragile to undergo the scanning process, is a real possibility. That would make available online such treasures as first editions by Goethe and Dante, the original manuscript of Frankenstein, or Handel’s own conducting score of the Messiah.

Nearly all of Stanford’s eight million books will be digitised, and all of the seven million held by Michigan University, Mr Page’s alma mater. Harvard will initially make available a randomly selected 40,000 from its 15 million. The New York Public Library’s participation involves fragile works not under copyright that officials say will be primarily interest scholars.

“This is the day the world changes,” John Wilkin, Michigan University’s associate librarian, said. “Nothing has ever been conceived on this scale. It’s access that we never would have dared imagine possible.”

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