World Digital Library collection grows to 10,000 items with manuscripts from Baltimore museum

WASHINGTON – The World Digital Library led by the Library of Congress is reaching a milestone of 10,000 items with the addition of ancient manuscripts from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

Officials say Thursday that the World Digital Library now holds more than 10,000 digitized manuscripts, maps, books, prints, photographs, films, sound recordings and other cultural items. The growing collection is a collaborative project that includes contributions from 102 institutions in 46 different countries.

The latest contributions include an early 16th-century Gospel manuscript from Ethiopia and a manuscript containing an Ottonian Gospel book fragment believed to have been made in a German monastery in the 10th century.

The Walters Art Museum has used a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to digitize its manuscript collection.