PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — This month the World Digital Library (WDL), an open access website sponsored by UNESCO and the Library of Congress featuring unique cultural materials and national treasures from libraries and archives around the world, has integrated 40 additional images from the Brown University Library.  Expanding the WDL’s coverage of Africa, Asia, and South America, an assortment of gouache paintings, watercolors, chromolithographs, pencil drawings, and other works from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection are accompanied by object information and narrative descriptions touching on a variety of themes. And, to strengthen the WDL’s content about Iran, additional Persian materials will be added later this year.

Since 2009, staff from Brown University Library and dozens of other institutions have been working with the WDL to promote cross-cultural awareness by providing access to iconographic stories and achievements from around the globe. Available free of charge on the internet and presented in a multilingual format, the WDL provides a rich and diverse database that can be browsed by place, time, topic, type of item, and contributing institution. Navigation tools and content descriptions are provided in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

The WDL is one of many outreach initiatives undertaken by the Brown University Library to make its collections more accessible and better known around the world.  The Brown University Library also hosts an extensive set of digitized materials on its website.

The Brown University Library is home to more than 6.8 million print items, plus a multitude of electronic resources and expanding digital archives serving the teaching, research, and learning needs of Brown students and faculty, as well as scholars from around the country and the world.

Contact: Jennifer Braga |  401-863-6913

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