Turning The Pages 2.0 now available for museums and libraries worldwide

Innovative 3-D software from the British Library to enable museums and libraries to publish their own material online.

From today, libraries around the World will be able to license the award-winning Turning the Pages software used by the British Library to bring some of the world's most rare and valuable books online.

Since its launch in 2004, Turning the Pages has grown to become one of the most popular resources at the British Library, allowing the Library to bring iconic treasures such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, Leonardo da Vinci's Notebooks and Mercator's Atlas of Europe online for everyone to see. With the launch of Turning the Pages 2.0, and a completely re-built software platform developed by Armadillo Systems, May 2007 also sees launch of a new "toolkit" that allows other libraries and museums around the World to create their own Turning the Pages gallery.

"The launch of the Turning the Pages Toolkit is important from a number of different perspectives" explains Clive Izard, Head of Creative Services at the British Library. "It has allowed us to create high-quality digital replicas of some of the most valuable books in the World and make them available to anyone with access to the Internet. With the launch of Turning the Pages 2.0, other libraries, archives and museums can now use our software to do the same. No technical expertise is required and we can even help customers create the images of their books. We hope to make Turning the Pages the most popular application for exhibiting books online."

Michael Stocking, Managing Director of Armadillo Systems and developer of the Turning the Pages software said "As well as making it easy for our customers to create their own collections, we also wanted to enhance the Turning the Pages experience. We have migrated the software to a new platform that places the book in a 3-D environment so, as well as being able to examine the book as a piece of text, users can now also examine it as an object. They can now look at the book from different angles, zoom in and even look at two books, side-by- side.

For further information please contact: Lawrence Christensen (telephone +44 (0)20 7412 7114, email: lawrence.christensen@bl.uk)

Notes for Editors

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world's greatest research libraries. It provides world class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world's largest and most comprehensive research collection. The Library's collection has developed over 250 years and exceeds 150 million separate items representing every age of written civilisation. It includes: books, journals, manuscripts, maps, stamps, music, patents, newspapers and sound recordings in all written and spoken languages. Further information is available on the Library's website at www.bl.uk.

For the past decade the British Library has created Turning the Pages versions of its greatest treasures, from Mozart's musical diary to Lewis Carroll's manuscript of Alice's Adventures. Turning the Pages 2.0, which has been developed with Microsoft to demonstrate their new Windows Vista operating system, enables an even richer user experience and speeds up the process of creating a virtual text. See: www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html.