[LINK] "Humanity's earliest written works go online"

[rfmcdonald]

Back in February, I blogged about how excited I was at the idea of bringing ancient data--music recorded in the late 19th century, on LPs or even wax cylinders--into our modern high-density informational environment. Some people are reaching even further into the past than that.

National libraries and the UN education agency put some of humanity's earliest written works online today, from ancient Chinese oracle bones to the first European map of the New World.

U.S. Librarian of Congress James Billington said the idea behind the World Digital Library is not to compete with Google or Wikipedia but to pique young readers' interest – and get them reading books.

"You have to go back to books," Billington said in an interview in Paris, where the project was launched at UNESCO's headquarters. "These are primary documents of a culture."

A website in seven languages – English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian – leads readers through a trove of rare finds from more than a dozen countries.

Among them: a 1562 map of the New World; the only known copy of the first book published in the Philippines, in Spanish and Tagalog; an 11th-century Serbian manuscript; and the oracle bones – pieces of bone or tortoiseshell heated, cracked and inscribed, which are among the earliest known signs of Chinese writings.

The World Digital Library's website is here.