Library Congress goes Digital
Library of Congress Advances 2 Digital Projects Abroad
PARIS, Oct. 17 — The Library of Congress announced an ambitious plan on Wednesday to digitize a collection of the world’s rare cultural materials — artifacts ranging from a photo collection of a 19th-century Brazilian empress to a crackly recording of the 101-year-old grandson of a slave.
The library also signed an agreement with Unesco in Paris to move ahead with the World Digital Library project, which is in the testing phase and will not be available for public use until next year.
Other national libraries appear poised to cooperate in the venture, which is modeled after the Library of Congress’s vast American Memory project that has posted millions of original items on the Web, including Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
