World Digital Library

On April 21, 2009, the United Nations launched the World Digital Library, which is digital collection of historic maps, recordings and other artifacts from all over the world. The collection can be browsed by place, time, topic, type of item and the institution which owns it. Many of the artifacts are held by national libraries from around the world, including the Library of Congress, which has digitized over 500 artifacts for this collection. Click on one of the artifacts and it will open a window giving your more information about it. Click on the "Open" button below the thumbnail and it will open another window in which you can zoom in to look at the artifact more closely. Check out the first printed copy of the the Declaration of Independence.

Spend some time in this site. The old motion pictures are really interesting, as are the photographs and maps. The pages on the books can be "turned," much like the gallery of artifacts done by the British Library (see my previous post).