The country is diverting a record 1.142 billion yuan (US$137.9 million) to fund a national digital library project, which aims to build the world's largest online Chinese-language information repository.

Based on the National Library of China (NLC) in Beijing, the project will virtually re-organize library resources nationwide and enable them to be shared by people throughout the world, said Zhang Yanbo, vice-director of the NLC.

Such an unprecedented project needs to borrow advanced experience and expertise from abroad, he said yesterday.

As a result, an international exhibition of digital information services and technology is scheduled to take place in Beijing between July 8 and 11, Zhang said.

The event - the first of its kind to be held in China - will allow the nation's national digital library project to conduct overall market research and locate long-term partners, he said.

Sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, the exhibition will bring together more than 200 equipment manufacturers and service providers in information digitizing, storage and transmission from all over the world, according to Vice-Minister Zhou Heping.

An international seminar on digital library development will be held in parallel with the exhibition, he said.

The vice-minister said he expected the exhibition and seminar will facilitate the implementation of China's digital library project.

The NLC began digital library research in 1995.

The government has designated the NLC as the organization to design and implement China's digital library project.

The national library had collected 23.11 million books by the end of last year, making it the largest book collection in Asia.

So far NLC has digitized nearly 200,000 books in text, audio-visual and image forms, according to Zhang.

"By 2005, the project will have generated multimedia databases which contain information equivalent to 2 million books, 6 million pictures and 8,000 video programmes, which are hyperlinked to each other," Zhang said.

(China Daily May 12, 2002)