JINAN -- More than 9,000 volumes from the former residence of Confucius have gone digital.

Over the past four years, the archives in the Kong Family Mansion in Qufu, East China's Shandong province, have been scanned and transformed into more than 1.9 million electronic files, totaling 1.11 terabytes.

The project was approved in 2013. The archive records are collected by each generation of "Yanshenggong", a hereditary title bestowed upon the eldest child of all direct descendants of Confucius.

"The materials are abundant, and precious to research into the Kong Family Mansion, Yanshenggong, Confucius teachings, as well as aspects of traditional Chinese society," said Fu Yongju, in charge of the project.

Confucius (551-479 BC), an educator and thinker, influenced countless generations of Chinese society.