A Grand and Glorious Idea
A World Digital Library

As a historian who has used the Library of Congress both on site and online, I know the value of making cultural artifacts and writings widely available. James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress, promotes the idea of the US facilitating other cultures to place valuable cultural materials online in A Library for The New World . Here are some highlights of his editorial:

This and America's rejoining of UNESCO embolden me to suggest that the time may be right for our country's delegation to consider introducing to the world body a proposal for the cooperative building of a World Digital Library. This would offer the promise of bringing people closer together by celebrating the depth and uniqueness of different cultures in a single global undertaking.[. . . . ]

Libraries are inherently islands of freedom and antidotes to fanaticism. They are temples of pluralism where books that contradict one another stand peacefully side by side just as intellectual antagonists work peacefully next to each other in reading rooms. It is legitimate and in our nation's interest that the new technology be used internationally, both by the private sector to promote economic enterprise and by the public sector to promote democratic institutions. But it is also necessary that America have a more inclusive foreign cultural policy -- and not just to blunt charges that we are insensitive cultural imperialists. We have an opportunity and an obligation to form a private-public partnership to use this new technology to celebrate the cultural variety of the world.

Through a World Digital Library, the rich store of the world's culture could be provided in a form more universally accessible than ever before. An American partnership in promoting such a project for UNESCO would show how we are helping other people recover distinctive elements of their cultures through a shared enterprise that may also help them discover more about the experience of our own and other free cultures .

If this is accomplished, it will certainly be something for which to be genuinely thankful.