Serendipity35

From The Washington Post, I discovered that another large digital archive is online. The World Digital Library ambitiously wants to centralize cultural treasures from around the world. Manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings are all being included into this growing online collection. Users will be able to navigate through these materials in seven different languages. Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian were chosen because they are official U.N. languages. Portuguese was added because institutions from Brazil, the world's largest Portuguese-speaking country, were involved from the beginning of the project.

Some items already available inlcude the Japanese work, Tale of the Genji, that is considered the first novel in history, the Aztecs' first mention of the Christ child in the New World, Oracle Bones from China circa 1200 BC, photos from The Great Depression and of Jackie Robinson and writings of ancient Arab scholars on the mysteries of algebra - and each has accompanying commentary.

The World Digital Library was officially inaugurated at the Paris headquarters of UNESCO, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The target audience is actually children and the project follows the success among young people of the U.S. National Digital Library Program that has been in operation at the Library of Congress since the mid-1990s. That program, found at the American Memory site, has made available 15 million U.S. historical records, including recorded interviews with former slaves, the first moving pictures and the Declaration of Independence.

Since children around the world go naturally to the Internet for answers to questions, the project hopes to make many primary materials available and also recognizes that another priority remains to help poor countries improve computer access and acquire the technology to get their own historical heritage online.