Imagine typing the name of any book into a search engine and having the results include a listing of every place you could obtain a digital copy: every online bookseller where you could buy it and every library from which you could borrow it.

Not only that, but imagine you could click on one of those links—bookseller or library—and download the book immediately to any device: Kindle, Sony, iPhone, computer, or any of the new devices on their way.

The San Francisco-based Internet Archive is trying to make that vision a reality, breaking away from the closed-loop systems that currently exist, where catalogs aren't searchable from the outside and where booksellers tie their sales to dedicated devices. Yesterday, at a demonstration at its the new home in the Richmond, the Internet Archive launched an architecture it created, called "BookServer," that would open up the experience of buying and borrowing books.

"[W]e can evolve from an environment of single devices connected to single sources into a distributed system where readers can find books from sources across the Web to read on whatever device they have," explains a post on the Internet Archive Web site. "Built on open catalog and open book formats, the BookServer model allows a wide network of publishers, booksellers, libraries, and even authors to make their catalogs of books available directly to readers through their laptops, phones, netbooks, or dedicated reading devices."

After the jump, the slide deck on BookServer that Internet Archive project director Peter Brantley presented at last week's Frankfurt Book Fair.

BookServer is just in its infancy. A few organizations have signed on use it, including Feedbooks, Aldiko, and Inkmesh, and some libraries helped the Internet Archive build the system. Now it's up to the Archive to evangelize BookServer and get it widely adopted.

Brantley's slide deck, from his Frankfurt Book Fair presentation: