Tomorrow, Google and Harvard University will announce a pilot project to digitize some of the 15,000,000 volumes in the Harvard library system and, in the case of works in the public domain, make them available on the net. Any decision for a larger project will be based on experience with the pilot. The project would merge Google's search capacity with Harvard's abundant resources. In separate agreements, Google will work with Oxford, Stanford, University of Michigan, and the New York Public libraries. K. M. Lawson at Munnin has the announcement that went to Harvard University community via e-mail today. You can read the press release at Harvard University's library site tomorrow. Incidentally, if you didn't know the significance of Lawson's blogname, Muninn, now you do. He's living up to it!
Update: Here is the New York Times story, which suggests that Harvard is less forthcoming in this project than the other libraries. Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the instalanche at Cliopatria.