World Digital Library Project Update

Annual Partner MeetingRome, Italy

October 29, 2014  

John Van OudenarenThe Library of Congress

WDL Project Director

Outline

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

Technical Developments

• Process Improvements– Experience with online content submission process– Dropbox– Online partner review

• User Interface (UI) Improvements– beta.wdl.org represents the first complete overhaul 

of the WDL site since 2009 – Developed for two main reasons:

• Respond to changing patterns of user demand• Accommodate thematic and related sections discussed at 

the 2013 partner and EC meetings

Content• 10,778 items • 500,087 images • 1,219 (98,039 images) items added in the past year (13% 

growth) • Items contributed by 34 partner institutions in 24 countries• 122 institutions in 56 countries currently represented on 

the WDL• 116 languages represented on the WDL

• Long-term content goals and selection criteria are under discussion

Partners• 183 partners in 81 countries

(added six partners in four countries: Andorra, Morocco, Portugal, United States)

• National Library of Andorra• National Library of Morocco• Newberry Library, Chicago• Public Library of the Municipality of Porto• Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge• Arizona State Library and Archives

• Capacity building challengeCurrent partnersProspective partners

Capacity Building• Digital Conversion Centers– Egypt– Iraq– Uganda

• Arab Peninsula Regional Group, Qatar National Library Doha Symposium, May 28-29, 2014

Users and User Engagement

• Visits: 3,761,303• Page views: 24,106,592• Downloads: 309,842• ReadSpeaker Usage: 206,619• Top countries by number of visits:

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

(Data for Library of Congress FY 2014)

Users and User Engagement• Visits are down but page views, total time on site, and 

other measures of engagement are up

• Decline is mainly in the number of users in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries,  and concentrated in single-page users

• Substantial growth in some countries, e.g., India, 42.9 percent; Egypt, 23.6 percent; Saudi Arabia, 21.5 percent

• Mobile traffic is up 78 percent, even before the launch of the new User Interface (UI)

• Improved balance among languages

Engagement Visit Duration Visits (%) Page Views (%)

10-30 minutes 9.6 20.2

1-5 minutes 29.0 20.1

less than 1 minute 49.6 16.8

30-60 minutes 2.2 11.7

5-10 minutes 8.7 11.3

1-2 hours 0.7 8.0

2 hours or more 0.2 4.3

Language of pages viewed in 2014

Two Interesting Examples from Social Media

Visitors Page Views

December 26, 2013 36,585 168,574December 27, 2013 23,181 110,373

Tweet on December 25 about Johann Sebastian Bach, Christmas Oratorio, Berlin State Library, www.wdl.org/7490 

Visitors Page Views

February 4, 2013 20,708 308,330February 5, 2013 15,969 172,980

Polish Facebook posting about an atlas of Poland, 1772, National Library of Belarus, www.wdl.org/11294

 

• History of Arabic and Islamic science 

• Meso-American codices 

• Expanding frontiers to build continental-scale nation-states 

• Sacred texts

• Chinese history 

• Railroads, canals, and the infrastructure of modern transportation 

• Systems of writing 

• “Intertwined” histories, e.g., travel and voyages, the Silk 

Road, epidemics

Themes

• World, Regional, and National Histories World History National Histories Other?

• Special Presentations Chinese Books, Manuscripts, Maps, and Prints  Illuminated Manuscripts from Europe  Imperial Russia 

Timelines and Interactive Maps