A new online collection is a treasure trove of global knowledge and culture, writes LARA MARLOWEin Paris
THE US librarian of Congress and the director general of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) yesterday launched the World Digital Library, an online anthology of the “best of” world cultural heritage.
The site includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, prints and photographs. It is free, and opens up an entire world of knowledge that most of us did not even know was out there.
On www.wdl.org you can, for example, study rubbings of oracle bones from the National Library of China. (Oracle bones are pieces of bone or turtle shell that were heated and cracked with a bronze pin, between 10 and 14 centuries before Christ, for divination.)
Other treasures include Arabic scientific manuscripts from Egypt, early photographs of Latin America from Brazil, and Arabic, Persian and Turkish calligraphy from the US Library of Congress.
The National Diet Library of Japan has posted the work considered to be the first novel in history, while the National Library of Sweden offered its 13th century Devil’s Bible.
The documents were scanned directly into the website, in their original languages, but are accompanied by explanations in the UN’s six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish and Russian), as well as Portuguese, because Brazil contributed substantially to the project.
The library was the brainchild of James Billington, the US librarian of Congress. He received support from his close friend, former US first lady Laura Bush, herself a former librarian. It has taken four years to develop and was launched with about 1,200 documents.
Development costs of more than $10 million (€7.7 billion) were paid for by Google, Microsoft, the Qatar Foundation, the Saudi King Abdullah University and the Carnegie Corporation.
Unesco’s director general, Koichiro Matsuura, said the library was a “great initiative that will help to bridge the knowledge divide, promote mutual understanding and foster cultural and linguistic diversity”.
Mr Billington modelled the online library on the Library of Congress’s American Memory website, which put 15 million US historical records online. It includes interviews with former slaves, the first moving pictures, and the US declaration of independence.
The library was developed by experts at the Library of Congress and technicians from the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt. Alexandria had the greatest library of the ancient world, but was destroyed in AD 646.
"I feel happiness, joy, satisfaction at having access to these riches. It's magnifique," said Jean-Noel Jeanneney, who long presided over the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. But, he cautioned, "one must ask according to what criteria it is organised. We must make sure the criteria of choice represent all cultures of the world, not simply the leadership of the United States."
Mr Billington had been offended when Mr Jeanneney questioned the cultural supremacy of Google in a book that was translated into 13 languages. The former French national librarian found fault with Google for prioritising English-language sources.
His campaign led to a European search engine called Europeana.
Like Wikipedia, the digital library will be open to contributions from anyone, so the potential for friction is enormous. Will Saudi Arabia try to censor representations of the female body? Will China admit Tibetan cultural records? And how would Israel react if Palestinians posted land deeds from British mandate Palestine?
China, Israel and Saudi Arabia are contributors, along with libraries and cultural institutions in Brazil, Egypt, France, Iraq, Japan, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Uganda, the UK and the US.