This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS PARIS 001733 
 
SIPDIS 
 
FROM USMISSION UNESCO PARIS 
FOR IO/UNESCO 
E.O. 12958:    N/A 
 
TAGS: KPAO ECPS ETRD ECON EINT ETTC EAID UNESCO
SUBJECT:  UNESCO AND THE WORLD DIGITAL LIBRARY 
¶1.   (SBU) SUMMARY AND GUIDANCE REQUEST:  Deanna 
Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services and 
Chair of the Memory of the World Programme 
International Advisory Committee met with the UNESCO 
Communication and Information Sector and the Director 
 
General (DG) on March 8, 2006 to discuss the Library of 
Congress' (LOC) initiative to develop a plan for the 
World Digital Library (WDL).  She also discussed the 
UNESCO Memory of the World Program with the Director 
General. The DG and other senior level staff were 
enthusiastic about the WDL project, but working level 
staff, who discussed the LOC's initial planning stage 
with Marcum, were suspicious of Google motives to fund 
the WDL plan.   Marcum stated that Google had stepped 
out of the picture after making its donation. The 
UNESCO Secretariat is confused as to whether Marcum is 
the point of contact on the WDL, or another LOC 
staffer.  Marcum has told post that, in her view, her 
meetings at UNESCO Headquarters were "unofficial," and 
mentioned that another LOC staffer would be designated 
as the project manager and would come to UNESCO to 
discuss the WDL further.  Mission requests guidance on 
who is going to be the LOC's WDL point of contact and 
what its vision of the WDL is, and asks IO/UNESCO to 
remind U.S. officials request country clearance from 
the Mission rather than setting up their own meetings 
at UNESCO.  Mission notes that the UNESCO Secretariat 
does not consider meetings between U.S. officials and 
the DG to be "unofficial."  END SUMMARY AND GUIDANCE 
REQUEST. 
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MEETING THE DG: 
--------------- 
¶2.  (SBU) Marcum met with the UNESCO Director General 
Koichiro Matsuura on March 8.  He stated his strong 
support for the WDL and noted UNESCO's desire to 
contribute to the project.  Marcum stated that the 
question was how to formulate a partnership with UNESCO 
on the WDL, noted that Google had provided 3 million 
USD in finances, and stated that Project Manager John 
van Oudenarem would be in contact with UNESCO to follow 
up.  The Communication and Information Sector's 
Director for the Information Society, Elizabeth 
Longworth, cited UNESCO's experience and familiarity 
with digitization, ability to provide a neutral 
platform, interest in building standards around 
metadata, expertise on governance and interoperability 
issues and commitment to spreading digitization. 
Matsuura instructed Longworth to continue to work with 
the LOC on an agreed-upon approach to the WDL, and 
stated that UNESCO could hold an international meeting 
to promote the WDL. 
¶3.  (SBU) Marcum brought up her recent election as 
Chair of the Memory of the World Programme 
International Advisory Committee and indicated her 
interest in encouraging U.S. institutions to put forth 
nominations for the programme.  The Director General 
responded with enthusiasm.  Ambassador Oliver noted 
that this was a good idea that ought to be discussed 
with the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO and urged 
Marcum to coordinate with them. 
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Working Level - Developing a Plan: 
---------------------------------- 
¶4.  (SBU) The UNESCO Communication and Information 
Sector convened a meeting for Marcum to meet with 
working-level representatives of the Division on the 
Information Society and UNESCO librarians and 
archivists from the Administrative Section in order to 
have a more detailed discussion on the WDL.  Marcum 
emphasized that she had come to UNESCO to listen and to 
describe the idea for a WDL and clarified that she did 
not have a proposal in hand to present to UNESCO staff. 
(COMMENT: The lack of a proposal appeared to take them 
by surprise, but they welcomed the opportunity to 
contribute to plans.  END COMMENT.)   The main issues, 
she stated, were governance, selection and 
architecture.  The LOC had identified a project manager 
for the WDL, and the goal would be to draft a report by 
October 2006, she said.  Marcum stated that the LOC 
could bring the principle of the library to the digital 
world, as an aggregation of lots of different 
information, not as a repository.  She stated that it 
was important for the WDL not to be politicized. 
¶5.  (SBU) She provided a history of the concept of a 
WDL dating beyond the American Memory and Global 
Gateway websites.  Global gateway projects, she noted, 
were bilaterally arranged with Russia, Brazil, France, 
Spain, The Netherlands and Egypt.  Each one addressed 
an area where U.S. culture intersected with these 
countries, and from this project, the LOC started to 
think about bilingual digital images of collections. 
The Librarian of Congress, James Billington, she 
emphasized, wanted to find ways to help people 
understand one another and use information exchange as 
a basis for global understanding. 
¶6.  (SBU) She stated that Billington spoke to the U.S. 
NATCOM last June to ask them to think about what steps 
to take to create a WDL.  The LOC had also reached out 
to the Digital Library Federation (mostly U.S. 
libraries, plus the British and Australian libraries) 
to look at standards, best practices, architecture, and 
metadata.  Marcum noted that many libraries around the 
world have started digital libraries already for items 
not covered by copyright.  Examples include the 
European library, the British Library/Microsoft 
partnership or the test project of the "Google 5" 
libraries.  (The University of Michigan, The New York 
City Public Library, Harvard University, Oxford, and 
Stanford University.)  A key difference here is that 
unlike the other projects, the European Library, 
spearheaded by France last year as a move "against 
googlization" and including the national libraries of 
Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, 
Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, 
Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, 
Slovakia, Spain and Sweden, is government funded. 
¶7. (SBU) Marcum explained that Google was impressed 
with Billington's desire to promote mutual 
understanding through on-line access to other cultures, 
and therefore donated 3 million USD for the LOC to 
devise a plan for a WDL.  The brand name of Google, she 
acknowledged, raises questions for many.  She added 
that there is probably every reason to be concerned 
about Google's influence on open access when one looks 
at the details.  She noted that the LOC did not pursue 
mass digitalization with Google because of concerns 
about how this would mesh with the LOC housing the U.S. 
copyright office.  She explained that there was almost 
nothing in writing in terms of an agreement between the 
LOC and Google:  it had handed over the check, and that 
was the end of its involvement in the WDL plan. 
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UNESCO CONCERNS: 
---------------- 
¶8.  (SBU) Above all, suspicion of Google and its role 
in the plan dominated UNESCO concerns at the working 
level.  Staff asked if there was an outline of how the 
LOC would use the Google funds (Comment:  UNESCO staff 
does not appear to know a lot about private 
philanthropy in the U.S and expected there would be an 
MOU-type document.  END COMMENT.)  One UNESCO staffer 
stated that he believed the Google 3 million USD 
donation was seed money for it to come in later on the 
WDL.  A French UNESCO staffer asked if Google 
involvement was even necessary. 
¶9.  (SBU) Another staffer stated that the U.S. 
initiative on the WDL was a lot like the U.S. position 
on Internet Governance while another stated that the 
U.S. should refer to the WSIS Geneva declarations 
(2003) which states that libraries should be accessed 
electronically.  UNESCO staff also noted that the LOC's 
"Global Gateway" project, cited by Marcum as an example 
of intergovernmental cooperation on digital items, had 
generated editorially driven electronic publications 
and that the WDL should not use this model. 
¶10.  (SBU) UNESCO staff strongly urged that the U.S. 
reaches out to a wide variety of international actors 
on this project.  The Communication and Information 
Sector's Director for the Information Society, 
Elizabeth Longworth noted the potential for 
politicization of the WDL, given the documented -- and 
French-led - negative European reaction.  Longworth 
suggested that the U.S. and UNESCO draw lessons from 
the Internet governance debate. (COMMENT:  Some at 
UNESCO feel the perception that other countries could 
not have a role in internet governance undermined the 
U.S. position in the lead up to WSIS II in Tunis last 
November.  END COMMENT.) She also asked who the LOC's 
stakeholders were in the project while other staff 
noted that Marcum did not mention libraries in Latin 
America, Arab States, Asia and Africa.  They mentioned 
a digital library project led by the Philippines and 
financed by Intel for 20 Asian countries link their 
public domain material. 
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UNESCO Value Added: 
------------------- 
¶11.  (SBU) UNESCO staff made many suggestions on how 
UNESCO might contribute to the WDL, many of which were 
repeated by Longworth in Marcum's meeting with the DG. 
They noted above all that UNESCO has the power to 
convene people, help with capacity building and 
training and to provide a neutral platform.  UNESCO 
also had a library portal with some 14,000 links and 
was active in the development of small digital 
libraries, such as the El Dorado library for Latin 
America and the Caribbean (Note: Only a Bolivian 
contribution to this project exists thus far, although 
in terms of other regions, the Palestinians also asked 
UNESCO to help them build either a virtual or actual 
library.) 
¶12.  (SBU) UNESCO staff noted the "Preservation of 
Digital Heritage" program, UNESCO-sponsored open source 
software for digital libraries, and a 2003 declaration 
on Multilingualism and Cyberspace.  UNESCO's French- 
chaired Information for All Programme could be 
involved, they suggested.  They offered to hold a panel 
discussion on the WDL at the next UNESCO Open Forum, 
and suggested that the LOC work with IFLA and UNESCO on 
this.  UNESCO could also call a conference on the 
issue, they added.  One staffer suggested UNESCO could 
create standard setting instruments in the area of 
digital libraries. (COMMENT:  Mission strongly advises 
against this.  END COMMENT.) 
¶13.  (SBU) The UNESCO Archivist stated that one 
excellent source of primary documents for a WDL would 
be the United Nations.  He cited the United Nations 
Intellectual History Project (UNIHP) whose secretariat 
was established at the Ralph Bunche Institute for 
International Studies of The Graduate Center of The 
City University of New York in 1999.  There was a 
potential copyright issue with some UN publications, he 
warned.  But there was a goldmine of material in UN and 
UNESCO archives, he added.  Other staff cited UNESCO's 
e-science program and its scientific information 
commons may be able to contribute. 
-------- 
COMMENT: 
-------- 
¶14.  (SBU) COMMENT:  At a high level, UNESCO staff has 
received the WDL project with open arms.  However, at 
the working level, suspicion of Google's role in the 
project as well as a lack of understanding of how 
private philanthropy works in the United States must be 
addressed for the project to succeed.  In addition, the 
LOC will want to demonstrate to UNESCO that it has a 
wide -- and significantly international - stable of WDL 
stakeholders.  Procedurally, the Secretariat has 
advised the Mission that meetings with the Director 
General and other senior officials at UNESCO 
Headquarters are indeed official, and we ask IO/UNESCO 
to convey to all USG agencies and branches that engage 
with UNESCO that country clearance and a briefing with 
the Mission Country team is essential to their visit. 
Mission also requests clarification of who leads the 
WDL project at the LOC, and, if this person is not 
Marcum, whether his views on the entire project are the 
same as the ones she conveyed.  END COMMENT. 
 
Oliver