The British Library has been developing it’s Turning the Pages project for several years, but now the project is coming to fruition. The project intent was to put rare books stored in its archives online, so that anyone can virtually thumb through them from the comfort of their home. No worries about getting finger smudges on the delicate, highly valuable pages.

So far, around twenty books have been added to the Turning the Pages project, including rare religious texts, Jane Austen’s early work, the first atlas of Europe, Diamond Sutra, printed in China in 868, Lewis Carroll’s original “Alice in Wonderland,” sketches by Leonardo da Vinci, and Mozart’s musical diary.

You can see images from 15 books in the series on the British LIbrary’s Turning the Pages site. The colors and detail are unbelievable!

Here’s a peek at the technology that makes this all possible.