The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a $1-million grant Thursday to a nonprofit project to digitize the nation’s libraries and make their contents freely available, writes the Associated Press.

The grant will support the formation of a new nonprofit group to run the Harvard University-led project and the creation of the technical platform to share material from public libraries and archives across the country.

The new organization will be charged with launching a national prototype of the digital library by April 2013, but Jim Leach, chairman of the endowment, said the effort will take years to complete and require millions more dollars from private entities.