ZHENGZHOU, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Digital technology is helping preserve China's ancient books and increase their use by readers in central China's Henan Province.

"Digitalization is a convenient and effective way to increase the use of ancient books," said Zhou Li, deputy Party secretary of Henan Academy of Social Sciences.

The academy has more than 600 types of ancient books and each type has at least one volume or up to 200 volumes. For a long time, they have just been stacked up in store rooms and seldom used.

China started protecting ancient books in 2007. So far, Henan provincial library has digitalized 15 volumes of chorography, while Anyang City library has built a database which includes more than 50,000 scanned pages of ancient books and documents.

To meet the needs of readers, Anyang library shares digital resources with libraries in another ten cities.

Digital technology helps preserve the books, said Zhou, however, more restoration work is needed.