PARIS ? The World Digital Library, a website offering free access to rare books, maps, manuscripts, films and photographs from across the globe, will launch April 21 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

Its cultural content from libraries and archives worldwide will be available in seven languages -- Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish -- and will also include material in additional languages.

Launched by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and 32 partner institutions, the project was developed by the world's biggest library, the US Library of Congress.

Libraries and cultural institutions from Brazil to Britain, China, Egypt, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States contributed both content and expertise to the project to digitize priceless cultural material and make it available on the Internet.

The World Digital Library (www.worlddigitallibrary.org) was the brainchild of Librarian of Congress, James Billington, who attended the launch of a prototype website for the project in Paris in October 2007.