posal of Internet users. Other digital libraries are
"only" digital - their life is 100% on the Web.

Hosted by the Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the
Universal Library defines the digital library as "a digital library of digital
documents, artifacts, and records. The advantage of having library material
available in digital form is threefold: (1) the content occupies less space and
can be replicated and made secure electronically, (2) the content can be made
immediately available over the Internet to anyone, anywhere, and (3) search for
content can be automated. The promise of the digital library is the promise of
great cost reductions while providing great increases in archive availability
and accessibility. [...]

There are literally thousands of digital library initiatives of a great many
varieties going on in the world today. Digital libraries are being formed of
scholarly works, archives of historical figures and events, corporate and
governmental records, museum collections and religious collections. Some take
the form of scanning and putting documents to the World Wide Web. Still other
digital libraries are formed of digitizing paintings, films and music. Work even
exists in 3D reconstructive digitization that permits a digital deconstruction,
storage, transmission, and reconstruction of solid object."

The British Library is a pioneer in Europe for research relating to digital
libraries. Some treasures of the library are already on-line: Beowulf, the first
great English masterpiece dated 11th century; Magna Carta, one example from 1215
issued over the Great Seal of King John; the Lindisfarne Gospels, dated 698; the
Diamond Sutra, dated 868, which is the world's earliest printed book; the Sforza
Hours, dated 1490-1520, which is an outstanding Renaissance treasure; the Codex
Arundel, a notebook of Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519), and the Tyndale New
Testament, which was the first printed New Testament in English, from the press
of Peter Schoeffer in Worms.

Brian Lang, Chief Executive of the British Library, states on the British
Library website:

"We do not envisage an exclusively digital library. We are aware that some
people feel that digital materials will predominate in libraries of the future.
Others anticipate that the impact will be slight. In the context of the British
Library, printed books, manuscripts, maps, music, sound recordings and all the
other existing materials in the