联合国教科文组织宣布将于明日（4月21日）推出世界数字图书馆。届时，用户只要登录该图书馆网站便可浏览世界各地的图书、手稿、地图及影像等珍贵资料。这是继“谷歌图书搜索”和欧盟的新项目“欧洲虚拟博物馆”之后全世界第三个大型数字图书馆。新建的“世界数字图书馆”将设有英文、阿拉伯文、中文、西班牙文、法文、葡萄牙文及俄文等多种语言的搜索引擎，收录的内容由各参与国图书馆提供。

The World Digital Library, a website offering free access to rare books, maps, manuscripts, films and photographs from across the globe, launches tomorrow at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

Bringing together priceless material, from ancient Chinese or Persian calligraphy¹ to early Latin American photography, it is the world's third major digital library, after Google Book Search and the EU's new project, Europeana.

Drawing on content from libraries and archives worldwide, it aims to reduce the rich-poor digital divide, expand "non-Western" content on the web, promote better understanding between cultures and provide a global teaching resource.

Launched by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and 32 partner institutions, it was the brainchild of James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, the world's biggest library.

The world library will be available in seven core languages - Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese², Russian and Spanish - with additional material in other languages.

Libraries and cultural institutions from Brazil to Britain, China, Egypt, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States contributed content - on a non-exclusive basis - as well as expertise³.

Billington, who launched a prototype in 2007 at www.worlddigitallibrary.org, will co-chair the official launch alongside UNESCO director general Koichiro Matsuura.

They hope to build partnerships⁴ with 60 countries by year-end, with Morocco, Uganda, Mexico and Slovakia already signed up to work with the project.

Pioneer in the digital library field, Google launched its Google Book Search project in late 2004, and claims to have seven million works scanned and uploaded onto the web at books.google.com.

The Internet giant has proceeded full speed thanks to tie ups with universities in the United States and elsewhere.

Last October, Google cleared a key hurdle⁵ as US authors and publishers groups agreed to drop copyright lawsuits⁶ against it after two years of negotiations⁷. Their $125 million settlement lays out a framework for dividing future revenue, from book sales and advertising⁸, between US rights-holders and Google.

Books in the public domain⁹ are available on Google for full download, while users will eventually have free access to 20 percent of copyrighted material, with an option to pay for full viewing.

Billed as a public sector¹⁰ rival to Google Books, the European Union's digital library, Europeana, launched to great fanfare¹¹ in November, only to crash within hours as it was swamped by visitors.

Back online since the New Year, at www.europeana.eu, a prototype set to operate until the end of 2010, currently draws around 40,000 visitors per day.