Serageldin Chairman of the Executive Council of the WDL
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Dr. Ismail Serageldin, Director of the Library of Alexandria, has been elected Chairman of the Executive Council of the World Digital Library (WDL).
According to James Billington, Librarian of Congress and Project Manager of the WDL, Serageldin was chosen owing to his sound expertise and accomplishment in establishing, in just few years, the BA as a major cultural and intellectual center for knowledge worldwide.
The BA has been one of the earliest and most enthusiastic supporters of the WDL since its inception in 2006. The BA is contributing to the project with its digital collection and technical expertise, as the ICT Sector at the BA has been chosen to co-chair the Technical Architecture Committee with the Library of Congress. The Committee is mainly responsible for establishing policies and guidelines needed to govern the technical aspects of the WDL regarding the tools and technology used.
The Executive Council provides leadership to the WDL in keeping up with its goals to expand multilingual and culturally diverse content on the Internet, to provide resources to educators, contribute to scholarly research and to build knowledge and capacity in the developing world in order to narrow the “digital divide”.
The election of Serageldin, among 89 distinguished partners to lead such a role in the WDL, is an emphasis that the BA has attained the trust and confidence of world class institutions to take this responsibility and is considered worldwide a “center of excellence”.