Major libraries are currently converting their collection into digital form in order to provide greater access to the public. These efforts have focused on the process of producing the digital images as surrogates for preservation and viewing technique. However, much of the experience of viewing these items as books is lost because the interfaces used to view them are designed to present a flat, 2-D image. Moreover, the significance of many historical documents lies beyond pure text. Key elements such as marginalia, paper texture and graphical information are not easily included in many standard electronic conversion techniques.

The Digital Rare Book System (DiRBS) is a project supervised by ibiblio.org, the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC - Chapel Hill's Academic Libraries. It is designed to reintroduce the experience of viewing a book into the digital form and consists of two components. The first is a system for viewing rare books and historically significant material in a form that provides them with the sense that they are "handling" an actual book. This experience is not limited to individual items, but also includes a 3D system for viewing an entire collection. The second component is a set of procedures and software tools for scanning, converting and distributing all this material online. The system will be designed to work with both Netscape and Internet Explorer versions 5+.