www.wdl.org
World Digital Library Partner Meeting
Washington, DC
December 5, 2012
Content Selection:
Where We’ve Been, Where We
Are, and Where We Are Going
John Van Oudenaren
Director, WDL
Agenda
• Content Selection Guidelines and Other
Factors Influencing Selection
• Results to Date
• Future Directions
Content Selection Guidelines
Working Group Committee Meetings
Paris, October 2007
Cairo, January 2009
Participants from:
Egypt
Russia
China
Kenya
Mexico
Qatar
Serbia
UNESCO
United States
Content Selection Guidelines, January
2009
Regional and Functional
Subcommittees/Working Groups
Advisory Committee on Arabic and Islamic Scientific
Manuscripts (KAUST)
London, June 2008
London, October 2008
Chinese-Language Content Working Group
Washington, December 2009
Mesoamerican Codices
Mexico City, May 2010
Regional and Functional
Subcommittees/Working Groups
Arab Peninsula Regional Group (Qatar Foundation/Qatar National
Library)
Doha, December 2010
Doha, February 2012
Conference of Partners and Prospective Partners
from the Former Soviet Union (Carnegie Corporation of New York)
Washington, June 2010
Examples of Recommendations
Mesoamerican Codices
Comprehensive (all significant pre- and post-Columbian
documents extant in Mexico, Europe, the United States and
Canada)
Arabic and Islamic Scientific Manuscripts
- Astronomy and especially the works of al-Sū fī, ‘Abd alRah mān ibn ‘Umar (d. 986), S uwār al-kawākib (Book of
the constellations of the fixed stars)
- Mechanical devices
- Illustrated geographies with maps
Examples of Recommendations
Chinese-Language
- Archival materials and architectural design on Yuan Ming
Yuan, the Garden of Perfect Brightness destroyed in 1860
and in 1900 during the Boxer uprising
- Taiping printed books (Books printed during the Taiping
Kingdom, 1851-1864)
- Astronomy and divination
- Pre-1900 Chinese maps
- Rare books from the Song Dynasty, 960-1279 AD
- Jesuit publications (Western works translated into
Chinese) from the 16th and 17th Centuries
- Ming Dynasty block-printed works with illustrations,
1368-1644 AD
Other Factors Influencing Selection
• Some content about every country in the world
• Content from as many participating partner
institutions as possible
• Priority for collections and items on the UNESCO
Memory of the World register
• Responses to user feedback
• Institutional and curatorial discretion
• Areas of concentration
Areas of Concentration
Designated in 2011 Business Plan
Arabic scientific manuscripts
Mesoamerican codices
Chinese rare books, maps, and manuscripts
Treasures from Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Bibles and Qur’ans (other sacred texts)
Early photographic surveys of empires
Results to Date
89 institutions in 46 countries have content on the WDL
10-12 institutions to be added in the next few months
6,588 items comprising 319,296 images on www.wdl.org
Some content about all UN member countries:
Highest: Russian Federation (1799)
Lowest: Andorra, Chad, Comoros, Cyprus, Fiji, Maldives,
Monaco, San Marino, Swaziland, Tonga, Vanuatu (1)
Content in 91
languages
Results to Date
Top languages by number of items:
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Spanish (1137)
English (549)
Arabic (395)
German (328)
Russian (297)
French (267)
Chinese (219)
Latin (194)
Japanese (162)
Portuguese (104)
Results to Date
Endangered and lesser-known languages
represented
Nyoro
Ladino
Dazaga
Siona
Chibcha
Achagua
Results to Date
Areas of concentration: Mesoamerican Codices
John Carter Brown Library, U.S.
Medicea Laurenziana Library, Italy
Library of Congress, U.S.
Center for the Study of the History of Mexico, Mexico
National Institute of Anthropology and History INAH, Mexico
University of Texas Libraries, U.S.
National Library of Spain
General Archive of the Nation, Mexico
Uppsala University Library, Sweden
Results to Date
Areas of concentration: Arabic Scientific
Manuscripts
Library of Congress
National Library and Archives of Egypt
Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Qatar National Library
Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library
University Library in Bratislava
Yale University Library
National Library of Spain
Results to Date
Significant amounts of original bibliographic
and scholarly research
– European medieval and Renaissance treasures
– Chinese rare books
– Early photographic surveys of empires
– Arabic scientific manuscripts
Future Directions
• Should we revise/update the content selection
guidelines?
• What is missing?
• What do users want?
• What are the gaps and imbalances?
• What role for committees and subcommittees?
• How can we better exploit the intellectual added
value (selection, metadata, description, translation)
• Other ideas and suggestions
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