Manchester digital library with 365,000 books now open

More than 360,000 academic books are now available online thanks to a project based in Manchester.

Mimas, the research and information centre at the University of Manchester, has teamed up with a software firm Autonomy to provide the new archive.

At least 300,000 of the books were published in Britain before 1800 with 65,000 from the 19th century.

Its search engine looks at the meanings behind a key word.

Caroline Brazier, the British Library's Director of Scholarship and Collections. "Shelves and shelves of books, that could previously only be read in our St Pancras Reading Rooms, by one reader at a time, are now simultaneously and instantly available to thousands."

http://mimas.ac.uk/