Paris - The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), based in Paris, is launching an internet World Digital Library on Tuesday, which aims to allow millions of interested parties access to the archives of major international and national libraries. A total of 32 other partner institutions are involved in the project alongside UNESCO, primarily the U.S. Library of Congress, which came up with the idea for its implementation in 2005 and realized it with the technical assistance of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. UNESCO, which has designated libraries as another means of education after formal schooling ends, expressed hope that the project will enhance understanding between cultures and grant access to the world's cultural treasures to people who have no other means to glimpse them. The study materials that will be available are intended to serve not only students and educators but also the general public. The World Digital Library, whose internet address will be revealed only on Tuesday, will function as an online search engine in seven world languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic. It will enable users to find not only digitized books but also images of maps and manuscripts, as well as photographs, films, and other visual records provided by the national libraries that are or will be involved in the project. Documents will of course be available in many original national languages. For example, there will be ancient writings from China, as well as Arabic and Persian calligraphy. The first libraries that contributed their electronic records come from Brazil, Britain, China, Egypt, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Slovakia, Qatar, Morocco, Mexico, and Uganda have also promised to participate in the project. By the end of the year, UNESCO hopes to mobilize a total of 60 countries, many of which are ready to assist with logistics and digitization of documents. Three major world libraries already operate on the same principle: Google Book Search, Europeana, and Project Gutenberg. The largest global internet search engine, Google, launched its book search portal at the end of 2004, allowing access to up to seven million digitized books. Europeana is a European Union project that began operating last November and currently offers 4.6 million books, maps, photographs, films, magazines, and other works. Project Gutenberg is the oldest, having started in 1971 and currently offering about 28,000 literary works.
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