World Digital Library: free access to world’s culture
Published 09 April, 2009, 16:05
The World Digital Library – a global online project offering access to rare books, manuscripts, maps, films, and photographs from across the world free of charge is to be launched in April at UNESCO headquarters, Paris.
The project offered by James Billington, the head of the world’s biggest library, the US Library of Congress, aims to widen access to the global cultural heritage. It was supported by the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, and 32 partner institutions, and now is almost ready to shoot.
Significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including musical scores, recordings, photographs, architectural drawings, and just rare cultural materials, were carefully digitized by a number of libraries and archives worldwide to make the priceless cultural material available on the Internet.
The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet.
The content from libraries, and archives from Brazil to Britain, China, Egypt, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United States will be available in seven languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Part of the material will also be offered in other languages.
Two years have passed since the prototype website was launched in Paris in October 2007. The new web-site launch is planned for April 21.
A similar project was launched in December, 2008. On the second attempt, the Pan-European library Europeana was started. During the November premiere, the project failed under the flow of visitors. Europeana is represented by materials from thousands of European national libraries, archives and museums.
discuss it
