A World Digital Library is coming together after an agreement signed yesterday between Abdul Waheed Khan, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communications and Information, and James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress in the USA’s Library of Congress. The project was started in 2005 by a $3 million grant from Google.

The project aims is to create digital copies of unique material from libraries around the world and make them available over the internet for free. Some of the libraries participating include the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the National Library of Egypt, the National Library of Brazil, the National Library of Russia and the Russian State Library.

The prototype for this digital collection is still being worked on, but it is expected to function in all six official UN languages (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish), and Portuguese.

This project also aims at helping develop the capabilities of developing countries to create and promote digital libraries. This way the collection can reflect more of the world’s culture, and hopefully will help promote cross-cultural learning and understanding, while simultaneously preserving some rare objects from these collections.

You can take a look at the prototype here.

You can read more about this initiative from a UN news release, A 2005 Library of Congress news release, and the Book Standard.