Launching a World Digital Library

Today, the Library of Congress announced an exciting new initiative, in partnership with who else but Google, to create a World Digital Library. This would be an openly accessible resource containing digitized versions of non-copyrighted books, manuscripts, letters, diaries, images, posters, and other primary source materials. The model for this project is LC's invaluable American Memory resource. Today's Washington Post has additional details.

This project sounds like a great idea. As I wrote in reaction to the infamous Google initiative, anything that increases the visibility of libraries and makes our collections more accessible is to be welcomed. Contrary to what many believe, the web environment has made libraries and librarians more essential than ever.