Kirtas Technologies in Victor will provide services to the Yale University Library, digitizing 100,000 out-of-copyright books for access through Microsoft's Live Search interface, it announced this week.

Starting in early 2008, Yale's library holdings will become available online through the interface, allowing scholars and readers to access them from anywhere in the world.

"It brings a level of access that, before, no one could ever imagine," said Lofti Belkhir, who founded Kirtas Technologies in 2001.

Belkhir said that Yale--which boasts a library of 13 million volumes, the second-largest academic library in the United States behind Harvard University's--has more than a million books that no other Ivy League school possesses.

He declined to give exact figures but said the contract with Yale is a multimillion-dollar project for the first year alone.

"They're going to include some of the most unique collections that Yale has," said Belkhir.

Yale chose Kirtas for its innovative book-scanning technology, including its APT BookScan 2400, which can scan 2,400 pages per hour while guaranteeing an overall error rate of less than one per 10,000 pages.

The machine uses air jets and robotic arms to turn the pages, and Kirtas says the BookScan handles the books "more gently than the human hand."