Short answers, pulled from the story.
The World Digital Library launched on the 21st of April 2009 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France. It opened with 1,236 items and eventually grew to more than 19,000 items from nearly 200 countries.
James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress, first described the concept in a June 2005 speech to the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO. The library was originally administered jointly by UNESCO and the United States Library of Congress, and is now maintained by the Library of Congress alone.
Google Inc. was the first partner of the public-private partnership, donating $3 million to support development of the World Digital Library in 2005.
The collection includes materials dating back to 8,000 BCE, among them an 8,000-year-old African painting of bleeding antelopes.
The WDL Charter concluded in 2020. In 2021, the Library of Congress migrated the collection to its main website and archived the wdl.org site. As of December 2025, the wdl.org domain redirected to a static collection at the Library of Congress.
The collection included The Tale of Genji, the Waldseemüller map (the earliest map to name America), the Codex Gigas, Ming dynasty copies of the Yongle Encyclopedia, the first recording of La Marseillaise, and the world's first film from the Lumiere brothers, among more than 19,000 items from nearly 200 countries.