It sounds like a simple idea - Organize and digitize all of the core accumulated wisdom of the world, and place it online for everyone to use, in multiple languages.
That's the aim of the founders of the World Digital Library. Their specific plan? To "make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research."
Although it will begin n late 2008 or early 2009 with only a 'few hundred thousand items,' the plan is to ramp rapidly as more countries and libraries offer up their archives. Cool. One more site with great content to counter balance the thousands of forgettable ones.
Comments