It opened to the public in March 2010, and aims to make more than 10,000 works available by the end of 2011.
It is hosted by the ETH Zurich's library and also includes works held by the university libraries of Basel and Bern, the Bibliothèque de Genève and the Zentralbibliothek Zürich.
[1] The library's principal aim is to make the Swiss cultural heritage more widely available and to assist researchers, who would otherwise have to consult the rare works in situ.
[1] Exceptional works from that era include the first full Latin translation of the Qur'an (1543).
The scanned works are made available in 300 dpi resolution as downloadable PDF files or as individual images through a web browser gallery.