World Digital Library Announced by Library of Congress - Law Materials Included

The Library of Congress announced the launch of a World Digital Library project and made known that its first $3 million in funding has already been promised by Google.

The project aims to digitize and make available on the Web important content from institutions worldwide. It appears that public domain legal materials will form part of the project.

The Library of Congress explained that the World Digital Library would be modeled after its American Memory Project which since 1994 has digitized and placed on the Web millions of items, including many valuable manuscripts from American history.

According to today's Washington Post article World Digital Library Planned - Library of Congress Envisions Collection To Bridge Cultures [may require free registration], "(T)his is the most ambitious international effort ever undertaken to put precious items of artistic, historical, and literary significance on the Internet so that people can learn about other cultures without traveling further than the nearest computer, according to James H. Billington, head of the Library of Congress."

The Washington Post adds that "Google has digitized about 5,000 books from the Library of Congress as part of a pilot project to refine the techniques to make copies of fragile books without damaging them. In the next phase of the project, Billington said Google will digitize books and other materials from the Library of Congress Law Library."

The Library of Congress website contains the official press release announcing the World Digital Library.