Like bookstores, the world’s libraries are going online. Since 1971, Project Gutenberg, promo.net/pg, for instance, has been transcribing classics into plain text. Now, other projects are underway around the planet to transfer the sum of human knowledge from crumbling paper to the Internet by producing high-quality scans of books, other printed material, and manuscripts.

And not just pulp products, either. The Internet Archive, www.archive.org, which claims over 350,000 books scanned from various North American libraries, is also collecting and preserving other media as well. Everything from old-time radio programs, concerts, cartoons, documentaries – you name it. It’s all free for downloading, and soon you will even be able to order individual copies of books to keep, printed on demand.

Google has gotten into the act with Google Book Search, books.google.com, but it’s more than just a literary search engine. You can search, but you also browse through books just like in a bookstore. Many of these are in the public domain and available for free downloading. Others may be purchased through links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. or you can find which nearby libraries have copies that you can check out.

Amazon, which has a kindred service, now offers a standalone reading device called Kindle. About the size and weight of a paperback, it boasts of a screen that looks like real paper and can be read even in sunlight.

Unlike previous readers, Kindle is capable of wirelessly connecting to Amazon via cellphone technology, but without monthly bills or service plans. They claim you can buy one of their 110,000 ebooks and download it in less than a minute for only $10. Newspapers and magazines from around the world are also available. Plus you can email your own Word documents and graphics to it.

This just might be the next big thing, www.amazon.com.