World Digital Library Content: An Overview November 2018

Number of Items

According to the World Digital Library (WDL) Home Page, WDL currently contains 19,147 items from 193 Countries between 8000 BCE and 2000:

Item Types

By item count, prints & photographs make up 50% of the content in WDL. These include photographs, portraits, sketches, lithographs, posters, woodcuts, and print-based imaging such as advertisements.

Newspapers are the second highest item count (19%) though by title WDL only contains some 15 distinct newspaper titles.

Type Items Books 2,195 Journals 1,067 Manuscripts 1,695 Maps 1,059 Motion Pictures 32 Newspapers 3,561 Prints, Photographs 9,491 Sound Recordings 47

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Subjects

Based on the site statistics, content per major subject headings (content may have multiple subject headings) includes:

Subject Items % of total content History & geography 16,135 84% Information/general works 3,560 19% Social sciences 3,163 17% The arts; fine & decorative arts 3,124 16% Technology (Applied sciences) 1,437 8% Religion 1,274 7% Literature & rhetoric 807 4% Natural sciences & mathematics 564 3% Language 168 1% Philosophy & psychology 140 1%

Within History & Geography, secondary subject headings include:

Secondary Subject Items % of total content Geography & travel 5,800 30% History of Asia; Far East 6,385 33% History of Europe 2,955 15% History of North America 1,662 9% History of South America 1,152 6%

Within Information/general works, secondary subject headings include:

Secondary Subject Items % of total content Documentary media, educational media, news media; journalism; 2,779 publishing 15% General serial publications 644 3%

Within Social sciences, secondary subject headings include:

Secondary Subject Items % of total content Public administration & military 730 science 4%

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Commerce, communications & 714 transportation 4% Customs, etiquette & folklore 463 2% Political science 429 2%

Time Period

The most extensive coverage is for the time period 1900-1949 (7,386 items), broken down as follows:

Curiously, the results do not add up to 7,386 as a result of the limitations of the search/browse functionality, in which only “results in English” display when selected. See example below:

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Timeline browse (“7,386 items”) Results (“5,870 results in English”)

Countries Represented

Of the 193 countries represented in WDL, the top 50 countries comprise ca. 90% of the WDL collection.

Top 20 countries by item count Russian Federation 4,557 United States of America 2,391 Iraq 1,705 Afghanistan 1,180 Argentina 994 China 968 France 945 Uzbekistan 899 Saudi Arabia 749 Germany 554 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern 507 Ireland Iran, Islamic Republic of 420 Japan 420 India 414 Italy 305 Egypt 302 Kazakhstan 282 Canada 277 Spain 270 Brazil 266

60 countries have fewer than 10 items in the WDL. The median item count per country is 23.

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Countries Contributing

Of the 193 countries represented in WDL content, 60 countries appear to have directly participated in the selection and contribution of content relevant to their region. In the majority of cases (for 133 countries) content was obtained from third-party institutions outside the country of origin. Nearly 60 countries are represented by contributions from one or two extraterritorial institutions (most often, the Library of Congress).

Only 20 countries contributed 50% or more of content from institutions in-country.

Items contributed % of in-country Country Items in WDL from in-country contributions Russian Federation 4,557 2172 48% United States of America 2,391 1649 69% Iraq 1,705 1509 89% Argentina 994 966 97% Germany 554 360 65% Brazil 266 236 89% Japan 420 228 54% Colombia 192 169 88% Uganda 152 136 89% Qatar 94 46 49% Latvia 59 39 66% South Africa 59 38 64% Serbia 69 35 51% Mali 44 31 70% Peru 53 30 57% Chile 57 30 53% Sweden 50 29 58% Slovakia 43 21 49% Andorra 21 20 95%

Another perspective on contributions vs. region of study is shown in the chart below representing the top 20 contributing institutions sorted into region of origin, measuring the number of contributed items relating to different world regions. Generally, content /contributors follow the expected curve, but the chart demonstrates the dominance of North American (Library of Congress) contributions of WDL content relating to most world regions.

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Contributing Institutions

Country representation (above) is not a direct correlation of institutional participation. Of the 19,147 items on the WDL site, Library of Congress contributed 8,537 items (45% of total collection). The next highest contributor, the Iraqi National Library & Archives, contributed 1,509 items (8%, principally newspaper & journal issues). The top 25 institutions contributed 90% of the WDL collection. The median contribution per institution is 12 items.

Top 20 institutions by item count Library of Congress 8,537 Iraqi National Library and Archives 1,509 National Library of Argentina 966 National Library of Russia* 819 National Library of Brazil 651 Russian State Library* 451 Qatar National Library 347 The Library Company of Philadelphia 298 Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage 292 Foundation National Library of France 282 Siberian Museum Agency* 247 National Diet Library 235 Bavarian State Library 226

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National Library of China 211 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries 195 V.K. Arseniev Primorsky Regional Unified Museum* 184 National Library of Colombia 167 National Central Library 160 University of Pretoria Library 159 National Library of Uganda 139

* The institutions in red represent an unusual case in that their contributions primarily (if not exclusively) were sourced from a legacy project of the Library of Congress, “Meeting of Frontiers.” Therefore, they may not represent key stakeholders of the program. See further below.

Special Thematic Collections

A. MEETING OF FRONTIERS

More than 13,000 books, manuscript, maps, photographs and other items were digitized in Russia and the United States under the Congressionally-mandated Meeting of Frontiers project of 1999-2004. An estimated 5,000 of these items were added from an earlier site hosted by the Library of Congress (see: http://frontiers.loc.gov/intldl/mtfhtml/mfhome.html).

The National Library of Russia (NLR) was a key participant in that program. Of a total 819 Items contributed to the WDL by NLR, 804 are tagged “Meeting of Frontiers” (MoF). 15 items from NLR in WDL are NOT tagged “Meeting of Frontiers,” representing selected publications on futurism and avant garde literary movements.

The Russian State Library (RSL) was another MoF project participant. In WDL there are 451 items contributed by the RSL, all of which were repurposed from “Meeting of Frontiers.”

Virtually all of the contributed items from the institutions below (except LC and NARA) were originally part of the MoF.

“Meeting of Frontiers” Items by Institution

2,631 Library of Congress 804 National Library of Russia 451 Russian State Library 247 Siberian Museum Agency 184 V.K. Arseniev Primorsky Regional Unified Museum 123 Yakutsk State Museum of the History and Culture of Northern Peoples 99 Novosibirsk State Museum of Regional History and Folklife 82 Igarka Museum of Permafrost 56 Memory of Kolyma Museum 55 Aleksandrovsk Municipal History and Literature Museum "A.P. Chekhov and Sakhalin" 52 Altai State Regional Studies Museum 52 Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

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50 Anchorage Museum 48 Irkutsk State University 48 Omsk State Museum of Regional History and Folklife 10 University of Alaska, Anchorage 7 U.S. National Archives and Records Administration 1 Sitka Historical Society

B. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AFGHANISTAN PROJECT

2,670 items from a special project undertaken in 2012 by the Library of Congress financed by The Carnegie Corporation of New York (see: https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-16-164/afghan-officials-receive- digitized-cultural-treasures/2016-09-21/).

Items: Contributing Institution 2,625 Library of Congress 21 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries (maps from 1850-1899 time period)

According to the “Afghan Project Book” (http://project.wdl.org/publications/Afghan_Project_Book.pdf), a number of other WDL partner institutions contributed Afghanistan-related items to the WDL, though these are not tagged “Library of Congress Afghanistan Project”:  University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries,  Brown University Library,  Qatar National Library,  Walters Art Museum,  Bibliotheca Alexandrina,  Government College University Lahore (Pakistan),  National Library and Archives of Egypt,  Sultan Qaboos University Library (Oman),  University Library in Bratislava (Slovakia),  Russian State Library, and the  Wellcome Library (United Kingdom).

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C. MEMORY OF THE WORLD

Some items are tagged with the subject “Memory of the World”, referring to the UNESCO-sponsored cultural heritage program.

A search for “Memory of the World” results in 895 hits, with 699 items specifically tagged “Memory of the World.” An additional 151 items are tagged “Regional Memory of the World Register, Scientific Memory of Andean America” (from the National Library of Colombia), and 40 items tagged “National Memory of the World Register, Latvia”.

“Memory of the World” Items by Institution

535 National Library of Brazil 44 United Nations Office at Geneva Library 39 National Library of Peru 27 University Library in Bratislava 11 Bavarian State Library 11 Museum Plantin-Moretus/Print Room 10 Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence 5 National Institute of Anthropology and History INAH 3 Austrian National Library 2 Central State Archive 2 General Archive of the Nation 1 Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation 1 John Carter Brown Library 1 Library of Congress 1 The Municipal Library of Porto 1 National Library and Archives of the Islamic Republic of Iran 1 National Library of China 1 National Library of Korea 1 National Library of Norway 1 National Library of Serbia 1 Slovak National Library

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