When the World Digital Library goes live today a former US professor's vision of fostering global understanding by making cultural treasures accessible to a huge audience takes a leap forward.
"This is a way of stimulating people to think about the interaction of cultures," James Billington, who has headed the US Library of Congress since 1987, told AFP days before the launch of the ambitious online library. "We hope it will increase international understanding and also increase the curiosity of the world we live in about cultural achievements of humanity.
"And the beauty of this whole system is that it doesn't prejudge who it's for. It's for everyone," said Mr Billington.
He pitched the project to global partners when the US rejoined the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation in 2003 after a nearly 20-year absence. "I suggested that we set up a world digital library, and that we do it in all languages of the UN - Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish," added Mr Billington.
He drew on the positive experiences of the 209-year-old US Library of Congress in digitising the tens of millions of items it holds.
"Putting together our national digital library taught us that new technology is a wonderful way to get together old cultural and historical primary documents, of which there is very often only one copy, and make them accessible to everyone," remarked Mr Billington.
The site that will go live today at www.wdl.org is based on a prototype presented to Unesco officials at the organisation's Paris headquarters in late 2007.
"If you click on one geographic cluster, such as Europe, you get all the content about Europe," said Michelle Rago, technical director for the global online reference tool.
"If you're interested in learning more, you go to an item and get a detailed page," she said.
Tens of thousands of images and pages of information have been digitized and translated for the site's debut.
Twenty-six partners in 19 countries, including the national libraries of Egypt, France, Iraq and Mexico, have contributed to the library.
Although that is far from globally representative, the worldwide reference tool will open its virtual doors and card catalogue to the online public in the hope of attracting more partners and funding.