Having degrees in history, I understand the importance of primary documents as they relate to history in general. However, it is often difficult to find and ultimately to access these documents, especially for students, including high school as well as university students, as well as researchers in a wide variety of disciplines. With the World Digital Library, access to these essential documents is easily achieved.
The World Digital Library is a free, internet‐based resource presenting, in a multilingual format, significant primary documents from countries and cultures around the world, regardless of time period. This site grew out of a desire by the US Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, who proposed to establish an internet‐based, easily‐accessible collection celebrating the world's cultural riches. The end result of this lofty goal is truly an internet‐based, freely available resource that makes it possible for any researcher to discover, study or simply enjoy cultural treasures from around the world. These treasures include manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings, among others. As of January 2013, there were 6,627 items in total to consult.
All resources on the World Digital Library may be searched by a variety of methods. An interactive map permits the end user to simply click on a geographical area (North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, Middle East and North Africa, Africa, Central and South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, or Oceania and the Pacific) to easily access any relevant resources. A time line on the bottom of the interactive map allows the user to filter the results by time period, with all time periods being the default. Two icons can easily be moved to limit the resources to any time period relevant to the end user. By moving the icons, the results are easily filtered. Now, all that the end user needs to do is to click on the entries and browse through the resulting collections.
There are other ways to search the collection. From a bar on the top of the page, the researcher can browse the results by place (large geographical area only), time (e.g. 8000 BCE‐499 CE, 500 CE‐1499 CE, 1500 CE‐1599 CE, for example), topic (e.g. arts and recreation, history and geography, religion, social sciences, etc.), type of item (books, journals, manuscripts, maps, motion pictures, newspapers, prints and photographs, and sound recordings) as well as contributing institution. All of these are easily searched. Simply clicking on the way one wishes to browse (time or place or topic, for example) will bring up the results. The results are displayed with the number of entries for each entry (e.g. as of January 2013, there were 441 maps). Click on any entry of interest and the end user is quickly and easily taken to the primary document.
The end user can also use a search box to conduct an open‐ended search using any term that one wishes to use. With the place browse described above, the end user can browse by large geographical area (e.g. North America). With the open ended search, one can now limit the search to a specific country, such as Canada or location such as cities or towns. One can also search by topic (e.g. war). Basically, this open ended search allows the end user to direct the search instead of simply browsing. While browsing the collection is useful when one does not actually know what to search for specifically, having the option to direct the search through the search box only strengthens the use of this collection. End users can search in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. All interfaces are available in any of these languages.
When the researcher is displaying the results of a search through either browsing the collection or conducting an open ended search through the search box, one can further filter the results through a box on the left hand side of the screen. The researcher can filter by place, time, topic, additional subjects, type of item, language or institution. Once having selected to filter the search, the results list is quickly updated without the end user having to force an update. Then, one can simply filter again depending on the needs of the end user.
Once the end user gets their result listing, the resources are easily displayed by simply clicking on the appropriate entry. Each entry then has a full entry with an extensive description of the resource. While the description can be translated into any of the languages mentioned above, the original document will only be displayed in its original language. Each entry also provides information on the creator (e.g. photographer, cartographer, etc.), the date created, time period for the resource, topic, additional subjects, type of item, physical description, institution and external resources such as links to the main collection housed at the original institution. In addition, depending on the format of the item, additional headings may be provided. All entries, with the exception of the description, are hyper linkable which makes searching easier for the end user. The researcher also has the option to have the entry read using ReadSpeaker. Users are also prompted to a listing of similar items based on the search conducted. All entries include a last updated date. In almost all cases that I checked, the update was within the last six months. This indicates that this is an ongoing collection.
Accessing the actual resource is simple. Clicking on the open icon or the picture of the resource will open up the resource. The researcher can then browse through the original document. In each case, the result is a scanned in version of the original. This does mean that the end result is only as good as the scanned version of the original. For example, for some letters, the opposite side of the letter is visible. This, in some cases, can make reading the letter difficult. However, in most cases that I checked, the quality of the end result was outstanding.
Overall, this is a superb collection that deserves to be promoted in any library. While its main interest will be for students and researchers, this collection could and should be appreciated by anyone. Highly recommended.
