The World Digital Library will launch on April 21, 2009

The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. 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, and to contribute to scholarly research.

World Digital Library Prototype

At the UNESCO General Conference in Paris on October 17, 2007 the Library of Congress, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the National Library of Brazil, the National Library and Archives of Egypt, the National Library of Russia, and the Russian State Library presented a prototype of the future World Digital Library. The prototype features books, manuscripts, maps, films, prints and photographs, and sound recordings contributed by the partner institutions. It functions in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, and includes content in additional languages. Other features include search and browse by place, time, topic, type of item, and contributing institution; a “Memory of” section devoted to in-depth exploration of the culture and history of individual countries; and videos by curators that explain why particular primary source documents are important and what they tell us about a culture.

Fonte: World Digital Library Project Home