FYI. Hoping to see something like this happen in India. Books have been released in to the public domain but this is rather interesting. 
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Hay (Husky)" <huskyr@gmail.com>
Date: 17-Sep-2014 4:02 pm
Subject: Abraham Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1571) now available on Commons

Cc:

> Hi everyone,
> i'm pleased to announce that i've just completed an upload of high
> resolution scans of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius,
> the first 'modern' atlas of the world.
>
> The Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands,
> (i'm a Wikipedian-in-Residence there) acquired an edition of his atlas
> last year. This edition is in very good condition, with excellent
> hand-colouring of all the cards.
>
> The complete atlas is available here:
>https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Atlas_Ortelius_1571
>
> Kind regards,
> -- Hay Kranen
> _______________________________________________
>