Octavo has been digitizing rare books for years now. They produce some really beautiful products on CD-ROM. Now Octavo has opened the Rare Book Room where almost 400 historic works are now available for online viewing.

Anyone interested in book design or even just books should really take a look at their site. For example, you can browse through a 1570 edition of Palladio’s I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura.

The interface at the Rare Book Room allows you to zoom in tightly on these really huge files.
Of course, the Rare Book Room also has everybody’s favorite rare book, the Gutenberg Bible….this one from 1455.

I’ve always been impressed by the quality of Octavo’s efforts and recall meeting a gentleman from Octavo years ago at a CNI task force meeting. We’re looking forward to what new titles Octavo might add to the Rare Book Room.

And just a suggestion to Octavo: If you’re going to being adding books to the Rare Book Room, perhaps an RSS feed announcing the availability of the new titles would be useful to your viewers. Thanks.