"There's no way to monetarily profit from this project. 'Tis a labor of love undertaken in the purest communitarian sense. The real 'profit' will hopefully manifest in the form of individual enlightenment through easy access to these classic works. Besides, transcribing them is an education in itself… Let me also add that this is not a sectarian/One-Great-Truth effort. Help from any individual or any group is welcome. We have but one slogan: 'Piping Marx & Engels into cyberspace!'"
7.3. Digital Image Collections
Other digital libraries include pictures, for example the impressive Gallica. Available since 1997, Pictures and Texts of French 19th Century are the first part of the massive project of the French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France) which is digitizing thousands of texts and images relating to French history, life and culture.
The digital collections of American Memory are a major component of the Library of Congress's National Digital Library Program. The National Digital Library Program (NDLP) is an effort to digitize and deliver electronically the distinctive, historical Americana holdings at the Library of Congress, including photographs, manuscripts, rare books, maps, recorded sound, and moving pictures.
"The Library of Congress National Digital Library Program (NDLP) is assembling a digital library of reproductions of primary source materials to support the study of the history and culture of the United States. Begun in 1995 after a five-year pilot project, the program began digitizing selected collections of Library of Congress archival materials that chronicle the nation's rich cultural heritage. In order to reproduce collections of books, pamphlets, motion pictures, manuscripts and sound recordings, the Library has created a wide array of digital entities: bitonal document images, grayscale and color pictorial images, digital video and audio, and searchable texts."
There are currently over 30 collections in American Memory, for example:
(a) African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907: 351 rare pamphlets offering insight into attitudes and ideas of African Americans between Reconstruction and the First World War;
(b) Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America: Photographs by Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner, 1935-1955: Approximately 29,000 photographs of buildings, interiors, and gardens of renowned architects and interior designers.
The New York Public Library Digital Collections provide the public with digital versions of books, manuscripts, photographs, engravings, and other items as well as tools to browse, search, and analyze these materials remotely via the Internet. Four general sections allow the browsing of the collections: Digital Schomburg (Center for Research in Black Culture); Archival finding aids; Cooperative projects; and On-Line Exhibitions.
SPIRO (UC Berkeley Architecture/Slide Library Slide and Photograph Collection) is the visual on-line public access catalog (VOPAC) for the UC (University of California) Berkeley's Architecture Slide Library (ASL) collection of 200,000 35mm slides.