Progress on the World Digital Library

UNESCO and US Library of Congress host meeting on World Digital Library project, a press release from UNESCO, December 1, 2006.  Excerpt:

UNESCO and the Library of Congress will host today at UNESCO Paris Headquarters a meeting to pave the way for the launch of a World Digital Library, an internet-based repository of knowledge from all cultures and in all languages....It will be chaired by Claudia Lux, President-elect of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA).

Other participants include representatives of national libraries in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. They will review major national and regional digital library initiatives already underway and discuss how these initiatives might relate to a World Digital Library....

The World Digital Library is to be developed in cooperation with UNESCO and other libraries and cultural institutions from around the world with the aim of promoting international and inter-cultural understanding, expanding non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and contributing to scholarship.

The project will focus on digitizing unique and rare material and making it available freely on the Internet. This material is to include manuscripts, maps, books, musical scores, sound recordings, films, prints and photographs, and architectural drawings from libraries and other cultural institutions around the world....