National Library of Scotland to digitise archive

The National Library of Scotland (NLS) has kicked off a £1.8m project to digitise its archive and make it available online.

The NLS - established in 1925 - holds copies of every publication in the UK dating from the middle ages, right up to the latest novels.

The rare book collections alone comprises one million books. Many of these are original printed volumes dating from 1455. The core of the collection is Scottish material.

The Library's ICT manager, David Dinham, said storing the collections electronically will both protect them against disaster and improve the public's access to rare and valuable documents. Until now public access to some ancient documents in a fragile condition has been restricted in order to preserve them.

Part of the project has been awarded to Glasshouse Technologies to provide consultancy in the design and implementation of a new storage infrastructure to make available the 100 terabytes needed to store the archive.

Glasshouse was hired by the library on a consultancy basis, to help it work up its bid for funding from the Scottish Executive, and is expected to continue working on the project until 2009.