The World Digital Library has been officially launched at UNESCO's Paris headquarters, offering free access to multilingual material.

Developed by the US Library of Congress, the website is available at wdl.org and provides rare books, journals, documents, maps, manuscripts, photographs and audio-video files from libraries and archives from around the globe.

Some 32 partner institutions from Brazil, Britain, China, Egypt, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the US have helped UNESCO with the project, which offers content in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

"Libraries have already been centers for information and knowledge," VOA quoted UNESCO's assistant director-general for communication and information, Abdul Waheed Khan as saying.

"So the fundamental principle to universal access to information and knowledge is largely meant by digitizing the content and making these contents freely available to every part of the world."

The World Digital Library was first proposed to UNESCO in 2005 by the Librarian of Congress, James Billington.

Funded by sources including Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah University and New York's Carnegie Corporation, the joint $60 million project contains some 1,200 high-resolution digitized files. The library, however, has an unlimited memory.

It also allows users to zoom in on ancient documents and archival photographs and search by keyword, time period, place, type of item or the institution which contributed it.

TE/HGH