THE manuscript of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Mozart's musical diary are just some of the fascinating pages saved for readers in the British Library.

And you don't have to be in London to view them, because these are just some of the library's cultural and historical treasures that have being transferred online in its Turning the Pages programme.

Visitors to the site can virtually' turn the pages of precious books, reproduced in their original glory, magnify details, read or listen to expert commentary on each page, store or share their own notes.

The library is home to a staggering 150 million items, from every era of written human history from Chinese oracle bones, dated from 300BC, right up to the latest e-journals.

But it's not enough....

And so a spectacular competition has been launched to encourage public libraries across the UK to unearth their own hidden treasures and share them, online, with an audience of millions.

Four winning libraries, one each in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is being challenged to uncover the items in their collections that most deserve to be turned into Turning the Pages 2.0 virtual texts'.

Each library will have its nominated design digitised, converted into the Turning the Pages 2.0 format and shared with the world through the British Library website (www.bl.uk) for three years.

The package is worth £10,000 and has been sponsored by Microsoft.

The competition is also being run in conjunction with the Society of Chief Librarians and the Scottish library authorities.

Chloe Tait, competition project manager for the British Library said: "The library has already reunited and converted Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Arundel and Codex Leicester, brought together digitally for the first time since the dispersal of Leonardo's manuscripts in the 16th century.

"The digital version is now available online and the winning library in England will receive the same exposure."

And David Lammy, minister for culture, said: "Since its launch, Turning the Pages has reached out to new audiences with an immediate power, allowing dynamic and interactive access to iconic works of global importance.

"I hope public libraries across the country will take up this challenge, and engage their communities in thinking about books that are important to them."

So now, the challenge is there for Herefordshire readers to come up with suggestions of what's in this county, and contact their libraries with them.

All entries have to be made through a public library but the proposed items do not necessarily have to have come from there - they could be in private collections, museums, churches or stately homes.

But the material must be visually compelling, such as illuminated or illustrated manuscript material, atlases or photograph albums, scrap books, commonplace books or artists' sketchbooks, and of wide public interest.

Closing date for entries from libraries is June 29.

The entries will be shortlisted and there is to be an awards ceremony in September.

Go to http://www.bl.uk/library competition