World Digital Library

The World Digital Library (WDL) is pretty amazing. The mission of the library is to "makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world."

Proposed by U.S. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, the basic idea of WDL was to create an "Internet-based, easily-accessible collection of the world's cultural riches that would tell the stories and highlight the achievements of all countries and cultures, thereby promoting cross-cultural awareness and understanding."

WDL partners are mainly libraries, archives, or other institutions that have collections of cultural content that they contribute. Click here to browse WDL by place, time, material format, or topic.





Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat