World Digital Library Project Update

Annual Partner MeetingAlexandria, EgyptNovember 5, 2015

  

John Van OudenarenThe Library of CongressWDL Project Director

Outline

• Technical Developments• Content• Partners• Capacity Building• Users and User Engagement

Technical Developments: New User Interface

Features :•  larger reference images•  a larger search box set against the background of archival world maps •  new sections for featured items, featured partners, and highlights •  a map display option for search and browse results to accompany the list 

and gallery views •  revamped browse options for place, time, topic, type of item (format), 

contributing institution, language (of the content/document) •  an updated item-detail page with many new features, e.g., an inset map showing 

location of the item and an option to show nearby items•  a more prominently displayed “View this item on the partner’s site” located just 

below the reference image on the item-detail page, intended to send more  traffic back to partner institutions  

•  upgraded audio and video display •  timelines, interactive maps, and thematic sections•  updated and revised “About” and “Help” sections.

• Timelines and interactive maps: ◦ Chinese Books, Manuscripts, Maps, and Prints◦ Illuminated Manuscripts from Europe◦ United States History◦ World History◦ Imperial Russia

 • Thematic section:

◦ “Arabic and Islamic Science and Its Influence on the Western Scientific Tradition,” launched with the support of the Qatar National Library

Technical Developments: New User Interface

• Translation experiment

• Partner dashboard

• Collection statistics page

• Institutional page template

• API page

• Slack application for content review

Technical Developments: Other

Content• 12,465 items 

• 623,465 images • Items contributed by 31 partner institutions 

in 23 countries in the last year• 128 institutions in 57 countries currently 

represented on the WDL

• 128 languages represented on the WDL

Content211,397,911 image tiles, comprising 1.8 terabytes of storage 

     (for facilitating zoom views)     (masters: 1,170,064 files comprising 17.4 terabytes of storage)

194,299 pages of searchable text in seven languages, drawing upon 730,000 word coordinate and plain text files comprising 2.2 gigabytes of storage

32.5 million words of translated metadata in six foreign languages 

4,407,662 HTML 5 pages (87,087 item detail pages and 4,320,575 viewer pages)(Google crawls 358,357 WDL pages, i.e., those it regards   as statistically significant)

Content• Only known copy of the journal believed to have been written on board ship during Vasco da Gama’s first 

voyage to India, 1497-99, From the Municipal Library of Porto, Portugal, www.wdl.org/10068

• Oldest surviving document written in Catalan, 1080, National Library of Catalonia, Barcelona, www.wdl.org/14165

• All 39 of the first editions produced between 1584 and 1619 at the press in Lima (the oldest press in South America and the second-oldest in the New World), in Spanish, Latin, Quecha, and Aymara, National Library of Peru, www.wdl.org/13760 through www.wdl.org/13778

• Two of three existing parts of the Book of Hours of Simon de Varie, 1455, National Library of the Netherlands, www.wdl.org/14414 and www.wdl.org/14415

 • Codex Vergara, Codex Azcatitlan, Aubin Tonalamatl, Codex Mexicanus, and three other Mesoamerican 

codices, National Library of France,  www.wdl.org/15278 through www.wdl.org/15284

• Five circa 1540-1574 manuscripts in the hand of or associated with Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, compiler of the Florentine Codex, Newberry Library, Chicago, www.wdl.org/15015 through www.wdl.org/15019

 • Complete run of the Cherokee Phoenix (1828-34), the first Native American newspaper in the United 

States, Library of Congress, www.wdl.org/15576 through www.wdl.org/15567

• 23 Arabic medical manuscripts, Wellcome Library, www.wdl.org/15263 through www.wdl.org/15277 and www.wdl.org/15431 through www.wdl.org/15440

 • Books published in Beirut, Cairo, Istanbul relating to the Arab renaissance, Qatar National Library, 

www.wdl.org/en/search/?item_type=book&time_periods=1850-1899&institution=qatar-national-library\

Partners

190 partners in 81 countries New partners in 2014-2015

• Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs, Oman• Middle East Institute, Washington• American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, New York• Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile• Biblioteca del Congreso de Chile, Santiago, Chile

Capacity building challenge• Current partners• Prospective partners

Capacity Building

• Digital Conversion Centers◦ Egypt◦ Iraq◦ Uganda

• Arab Peninsula Regional Group, Qatar National Library Doha Symposium, May 13-14, 2015

Users and User Engagement

• Visits: 6,806,147• Page views: 30,823,978• Downloads: 1,546,342• ReadSpeaker Usage: 245,497• Top countries by number of visits:

China, United States, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Russian Federation, 

Canada  

• Top countries by page views: United States, China, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, France, Russian Federation, Germany, United Kingdom, and Italy

(Data for Library of Congress FY 2015)

Users and User Engagement

• Substantial growth in most countries (percent increase, last year)China 1338Italy 370Canada 156France 128Saudi Arabia 70Egypt 66United States 44Russia 37Germany 31 Mexico 13 Spain -19

• Mobile traffic is up 55.6 percent from previous year.

Language of pages viewed in 2015 Language Percentage

Spanish 38.1%

English 23.3%

Chinese 11.2%

Arabic 9.0%

Portuguese 7.2%

French 6.0%

Russian 5.1%

Priorities for the Coming Year

• Add content  • Sustain and build on the recent increases in usage and user engagement

• Recruit new partners, especially in parts of the world in which          the WDL is underrepresented

• Continue to develop timelines, themes, and other interpretive materials

• Work to ensure the financial sustainability and growth of the WDL