The World Digital Library

Since 2005, the Library of Congress and UNESCO have been promoting the idea of ​​an Internet Library, finally in April 2009 it was officially launched. It adds to a host of referral sources (such as Europeana), with the variant, which is supported by libraries in different countries and with an economic contribution that is sure to guarantee sustainability in the long term.

To start the World Digital Library received financial contributions from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Qatar Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, among others. For now it contains material in 7 different languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish; each material in its own language, only the metadata is translated.

Institutions that collaborate

The content includes books, manuscripts, maps, diaries, films, photographs and sound recordings. A true treasure as long as the libraries involved continue to contribute material. Among these institutions are:

• Archive and the National Library of Iraq | + See
• Associazion Tetuán Asmir | + See
• Central Library, Qatar Foundation | + See
• Columbus Memorial Library, Organization of American States | + See
• State Library of Russia | + See
• John Carter Brown Library | + See
• Central National Library | + See
• National Library of Brazil | + See
• National Library of China | + See
• National Library of France | + See
• National Library of Israel | + See
• National Library of Russia | + See
• National Library of Serbia | + See
• National Library of Sweden | + See
• National Library of the Diet | + See
• National Library and Archives of Egypt | + See
• University Library of Bratislava | + See
• Library of Alexandria | + See
• Brown University Library | + See
• Library of the University of Pretoria | + See
• Yale University Library | + See
• Library of Congress | + See
• Center for the Study of the History of Mexico (CEHM) CARSO | + See
• Mamma Haidara Memorial Collection | + See
• Royal Netherlands Institute of Studies on Southeast Asia and the Caribbean | + See
• The National Archives and Document Administration (NARA) of the United States of America | + See

Of which regions there is content

The library facilitates the search by region, and once selected it can be filtered by country, period of time or type of content.

Here you can see the links to regions and the total of materials available to this date (September of 2009)

• Africa | + See all 120
• South Asia and Central Asia | + See all 65
• East Asia | + See all 99
• Europe | + See all 379
• Latin America and the Caribbean | + See all 319
• North Africa and the Middle East | + See all 177
• North America | + See all 137
• Oceania and Pacific | + See all 31
• Southeast Asia | + See all 49
• Antarctica | + See all 1
• World | + See all 23

To show a button

Among interesting documents you can see:

• The diary of the trip of magallanes
• Geographical Atlas of Antoine du Pérac Lafréry, 17 maps of Europe published in 1575
• Topographic map of the Centa Valley, north of Argentina, published in 1794. 
• Foto del Carnival Mazatlan at 1948, in Mexico

Digital files can be downloaded, although not at full resolution, but the online viewer allows a very succulent approach. To show an example, in these days of political tension in Central America:

The map of the provinces of Central America, when they formed a single republic between 1823 and 1838.

See the level of detail, it is curious that this was one of the maps used with bad
to intention to favor England in its dispute with Guatemala in the region now known as Belize (formerly British Honduras).

The site is:  WDL