World Digital Library goes Live

The World Digital Library (WDL) was formally released yesterday. Yale University is a founding partner and Dan Chudnov (formerly at Yale; now at LC) helped develop it. You can find brief descriptions in the Chronicle of Higher Education and New York Times and more details on the site itself. It was also discussed on Slashdot. According to the Mission Statement, the WDL "makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world." Interactive maps and timelines (along with more traditional textual metadata) provide user-friendly access to the collection. (Speaking of timelines, I keep hoping we'll find a way to deploy this very cool SIMILE widget at Yale.) According to the Yale Bulletin, Yale has contributed 22 pencil drawings of the 1839 Amistad captives, an 1810 map of North America by William Clark, an Arabic calligraphy primer, and Magellan's journal from his 1522 circumnavigation of the globe. More items will be added over time.