Inside the Quest to Put the World's Libraries Online

The Digital Public Library of America wants to make millions of books, records, and images available to any American with an Internet connection. Can it succeed where others have failed?...

The DPLA hopes to create a platform that will orchestrate millions of materials—books from public and university libraries, records from local historical societies, museums, and archives—into a single, user-friendly interface accessible to every American with Internet access. It will launch a prototype in April 2013. If successful, the resource has the potential to revolutionize the way information is organized and found online, to radically expand public access to knowledge, and to represent a sharp counterpoint to the model already offered by search-giant Google, whose "Google Books" program is now eight years old...