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This article reports on the projects of The British Library in London, England as of June 2004 that make material from the library and other collections available to researcher and user around the world. The Turning the Pages project is an exhibit which makes images of some of the world's great treasures available to the public with technology that allows visitors to turn the pages of a digital document on a touch-screen display. Ten manuscripts are featured in the collection. The oldest is the Lindisfarne Gospels, a work that dates to the early eight century. On April 7, 2004, The British Library announced the Endangered Archives Programme, an $18 million project to preserve threatened records around the world. The project hopes to counter threats to historical and cultural records form wars, natural disasters, ignorance and neglect. A new Web site was launched in April 2004 that charts the life and voyages of Captain James Cook. It display material from the British Library, the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum and other archives in England's North East. In May 2004, The British Library announced the Archival Sound Recordings project. This project aims to digitize 12,000 items of sound recordings from The British Library's Sound Archive.

The article presents several international initiatives that are making digital collections from libraries and cultural institutions available to researchers on the Internet. In September 2008, the Organization of American States (OAS) agreed to contribute materials to the U.S. Library of Congress' World Digital Library. The Wellcome Library is partnering with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina to make available its collection of Egyptian and Arabic medical manuscripts. A pilot program, to be finished in late 2009 at the University of Manchester's John Rylands University Library, will digitize medieval texts including early manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and John Wyclif's Latin to English translation of the New Testament.