World Digital Library

The World Digital Library, in German " World Digital Library ", is a project of the U.S. National Library Library of Congress and UNESCO. The World Digital Library provides culturally outstanding documents from around the world via the Internet free of charge and available for everyone.

Project goal

The aim of the project is to work with the materials to preserve the collective memory of mankind digital and promote international and intercultural understanding. Specifically Nations also be encouraged, not belonging to the Western and English-speaking world. A special attention is paid to the cultures of the Middle East.

These cultural resources should be open to teachers, students and other interested parties and to contribute to scientific research.

In addition, the amount and variety of cultural content on the Internet expands and digital collaboration of the partner institutions are built and improved between and within the countries involved.

History

Initiative

After more than 20 years of absence, the United States had returned to the UNESCO for permanent employees in 2003. As a National Commissioner of the United States for UNESCO head of the Library of Congress James Hadley Billington was nominated. For its first participation in the annual conference in June 2005, he was invited to a plenary lecture. His lecture was titled A View of the World Digital Library, and he designed a vision that the rich collections of the institutions and libraries in the world should be returned.

Google Inc. was the first participants of this public-private partnership and donated 2005, three million dollars developing the World Digital Library.

" [ ... ] Institutions, libraries, and museums have preserved Could be givenName back to the world free of charge and in a new form far more universally accessible than any forms thathave Preceded it. "

" [ ... ] Institutions, libraries and museums have preserved and could give it back to the world for free, and this in a form that is universally accessible as any forms that existed before."

Planning phase

At the annual conference of the National Commission, 2006, the senior officer of the Library of Congress John Van Oudenaren submitted a project plan. Thus the Billingtons initiative could be put into action. First, consult in four main areas of the participating partners the basics.

• Technical structure
• Selection
• Leadership
• Financing

In December 2006, 45 directors and technical directors of national libraries met with other cultural and educational representatives in Paris to discuss the development of the digital library world and to take the project in attack. The participants formed working groups for each of the four project areas in order to formulate the requirements.

Implementation phase

The planning process was continued with a meeting of the working groups in the first half of 2007, more experts on digital libraries were consulted. Computer scientists, specialists from the library science and web development, as well as experts from the fundraising continued the project work. These working groups reported their findings in July 2007 in a WDL group together and created a presentation on the structure of the website. This paper was presented on October 17, 2007 in Paris at the 34th session of the UNESCO as WDL presentation. The prototype of the global digital library has been tested by the UNESCO delegates. During this meeting, the Director of the Library of Congress, James H. Billington, and the Deputy Director of UNESCO Communication and Information, Abdul Waheed Khan signed, an agreement for further work.

In early September 2008, the Organization of American States (OAS ) decided to cooperate with the U.S. Library of Congress in the development of the WDL. Secretary General José Miguel Insulza your signed jointly with Congress Librarian James Billington an agreement on cooperation in the OAS headquarters.

In the following period until the spring of 2009, almost 40 partners were acquired to cooperate. In addition to the founding members of the national libraries of Egypt, Brazil, China, France, Iraq, Israel, Russia, Serbia, Sweden and Uganda are involved. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is involved with the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA ).

On April 21, 2009, it was officially opened by UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura and the Head of the Library of Congress James Hadley Billington, the World Digital Library in Paris.

Scope of project

Manuscripts, maps, rare books, music, sound recordings, films, photographs and architectural plans and other types of documents to be included in the project. A search is possible in the full text of an input field and graphically. With a timeline of the period, the result of search can be limited. For the preselection of a world map to select regions is offered.

The selected document can be searched with a zoom on details in the high-resolution version. Among the digitized original documents is an explanatory statement text available.

The header of the website are in the English version, the search criteria

• Place ( city, region ),
• Time ( period ),
• Topic (keyword )
• Type of Item (Category )
• Institution (partner institution).

Project languages ​​are the six official UN languages ​​Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish and Portuguese in addition, the language is possible through a selection input. In another input field keywords for a full text search can be entered. Upon submission of document selection related documents ( related items ) will be offered.

The accessibility was implemented according to the recommendations of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0.

The World Digital Library and the European portal Europeana are two separate projects and have different objectives. Europeana mainly covers digital collections across Europe starting in European libraries, archives and museums. The World Digital Library is culturally and historically offer particularly significant content from all 193 member countries of UNESCO. The predominantly stored as TIFF and PDF files objects are not linked from the original locations, but are on separate servers, the WDL.

At the start of the WDL contained 1170 objects, two days later 1358 objects were reported. Billington said: " It is an open process. " Accordingly, there is no target.

Partners of the project

German, Austrian and Swiss institutions have end of April 2009 registered objects; some are now involved as project partners.