In Paris, an International Working Group Shows Off the Prototype For a Multilingual 'Intellectual Cathedral' of Digitized Knowledge
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Submitted by Laurie Bobley
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/17/AR2007101702260.html?referrer=emailarticle
Late next year a long awaited event will occur: the World Digital Library will become available. The World Digital Library, a partnership between the Library of Congress and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) will present to the world’s population, digitized original resources such as documents, maps, photographs, films, recordings, manuscripts, musical scores, architectural drawings, rare books, and other unique cultural materials on the internet. These materials will be available in seven different languages and access will be free. The most interesting aspect of the project is that the information will be presented in its original form.
This project aims to expand non-Western and non-English content to provide tool for multicultural, multilingual exchanges. The goal is to increase understanding and awareness of the rich contributions of other people, places, events, and materials. The site will be accessible in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Arabic, which are the six official languages of the United Nations, as well as in Portuguese.
The World Digital Library will become invaluable to education and to the field of scholarly research. One ultimate goal is for the site to be widely accessible to children and adults from both rich and poor countries, with a particularly user-friendly design. In addition to the Library of Congress and UNESCO, other partners include Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Egypt), International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, the National Library of Brazil, National Library and Archives of Egypt, National Library of Korea, National Library of Russia, and the Russian State Library.
In the 1990’s the Library of Congress introduced the National Digital Library Program that allows access to approximately 11 million digitized U.S. historical files (documents, photos, videos, etc.) on its American Memory Web site. This site will serve a model for the World Digital Library.
Initially there will be a few hundred thousand entries but is expected to quickly garner additional resources and entries from other countries after the launch. The 190 other nations represented in UNESCO will look to the LOC as a model for digitizing their own historical and cultural information. For, example, Egypt’s early history was preserved in a different way that the early history of England and it should be able to be accessed in the way it was preserved.
The WDL will
http://www.worlddigitallibrary.org
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
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2 comments:
This sounds absolutly amazing. I especially enjoy the fatc that all resources will be displayed in their orginal forms. This will further allow people to examine culture because they will see how different nations document their events. It is so important that we learn about other cultures to promote tolerance. I am happy to hear that it will be free because so many valuable dtata basis require a membership.
This will be the future of most libraries where all the information will be digitized. Its great that this allows access to everyone and is available in many languages. As time goes on hopefully it will expand to more languages and increase in its size.
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