John Van Oudernaren, senior advisor to the World Digital Library, talks about the global library initiative. It grows out of the American Memory project in 1994, an effort to being 5M references on line. The Global Gateway grew out of that, an effort to put selected material from international libraries online, working with Russia, Brazil, Spain. the Netherlands and two other countries [which I couldn’t see on his slide…sorry]. Projects provide thematic coherence, e.g., life in Alaska and in Siberia. The interpretive text is bilingual; not every individual artifact is translated.

The scanning is being done in three spots in Russia, and in Brazil and Egypt. Almost a million images have been scanned. Images include maps, illustrations, and the full text of books.

He says the project is a success, but it’s still too tied to American history and is difficult to scale. Plus, each project is in only two languages, which is a limitation. The next step is to build the World Digital Library. Dr. Billington proposed this about a year ago. It intends to digitize selected materials to enrich particular themes highlighting various cultures. It is not a mass digitizing of libraries. Scholars would advise on which items to scan in. The project is still in the planning stage, supported by a $3M grant from Google. [Tags: libray_or_congress libraries]

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