The Library of Congress was recently given a 2 million dollar grant to digitize their library with special notice for the brittle books. This would make the viewing of these books available to the public, because before this the Library did not make them available for view for fear of damaging the books.
With this project the people working on it will be working on finding the best ways to scan and make digital the books in the worst conditions. This will be a major project because of the fragile matter that they will be dealing with.
The project will start in two months and the team is excited to make all of the books available to the everyday library patron. Some of the times to be scanned include: American history volumes, U.S. genealogy and regimental histories with collections from the Civil War period, and six collections of rare books with the Benjamin Franklin Collection included.
Check out the article at: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/02/01/digital.books.ap/index.html?eref=rss_tech