World digital library moves ahead.

The Library of Congress and UNESCO plan to move ahead with the World Library project, which is currently in testing phase and will not be available to the public until later this year or early 2009.

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and UNESCO Assistant Director for Communication and Information Abdul Waheed Khan recently signed an agreement at UNESCO headquarters in Paris pledging cooperative efforts to build the website, www.worlddigitallibrary.org.

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Started two years ago with a $3 million grant from Google and technical assistance from Apple, the World Digital Library will digitize special and rare materials from libraries and other cultural institutions around the world and make them available for free on the Internet. These materials will include manuscripts, maps, books, musical scores, sound recordings, films, prints, and photographs. Some of the treasures offered will be an elaborate 17th-century map of the world that shows California as a separate island, a 1903 Thomas Edison film of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, and a 17th-century Arabic manuscript on geometry basics.

The project aims to promote international and intercultural understanding, increase the quantity and diversity of cultural materials online, and contribute to education and scholarship. "The vision is simply that this is a means for promoting far better intercultural understanding in the world," Billington told The New York Times.

Under the agreement, the Library of Congress and UNESCO will cooperate in convening working groups of experts and other stakeholders to develop guidelines and technical specifications for the project, enlist new partners, and secure the necessary support for the project from private and public sources. A key aspect of the project is to bridge the digital divide in developing nations so all countries and regions of the world can participate and be represented in the World Digital Library.

To test the feasibility of the project, the Library of Congress, UNESCO, and five other partner institutions--the Bibliotheca Alexandrina of Alexandria, Egypt; the National Library of Brazil; the National Library of Egypt; the National Library of Russia; and the Russian State Library--have developed a prototype of the World Digital Library and expect the complete website to become available to the public in late 2008 or early 2009, according to the Times.

The website will function in seven languages--Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish--and feature search and browse functionality by place, time, topic, and contributing institution. It will include video commentaries from curators alongside material such as original maps, manuscripts, photographs, and recordings, the Times reported. Project coordinators said they hope the material will ultimately be available on personal computers, handheld devices, and laptops.

The Times said other national libraries may join the venture, which is modeled after the Library of Congress' vast American Memory project that has posted millions of original items on the web, including the Gettysburg Address.

European libraries have been busy developing their own digital collections. The European Digital Library will release its prototype next year, and Google is hard at work digitizing libraries in the United States and Britain.

World Digital Library project organizers are currently raising money, discussing alliances with the likes of Nokia and the Vodafone Group, and gathering commitments from countries to participate.