An interactive web databasethat recreates in virtual form the contents of a Chinese Buddhist library cave discovered in 1900 has been launched by the British Library. The International Dunhuang Project has recreated the cave (http://idp. bl.uk) found near the Silk Road oasis town of Dunhuang on the edge of the Gobi desert. The database is a catalogue and image bank,containing more than 20,000 manuscripts in Chinese, Tibetan and other Central Asian languages with more than 1,000 colour images.