1st Book Published In RP On Display Online

From The Philippine Star:

PARIS – National libraries and the UN education agency put some of humanity’s earliest written works online Tuesday, from ancient Chinese oracle bones to the first European map of the New World, as well as the first book ever published in the Philippines during the Spanish empire, the Doctrina Christiana, in 1593.

US Librarian of Congress James Billington said the idea behind the World Digital Library is not to compete with Google or Wikipedia but to pique young readers’ interest – and get them reading books.

“You have to go back to books,” Billington said in an interview in Paris, where the project was launched at UNESCO’s headquarters. “These are primary documents of a culture.”

A Website in seven languages – English, Arabic, Chinese, French Spanish, Portuguese and Russian – leads readers through a trove of rare finds from more than a dozen countries.

Among them: a 1562 map of the New World; the only known copy of the first book published in the Philippines, in Spanish and Tagalog; an 11th-century Serbian manuscript; and the oracle bones – pieces of bone or tortoise shell heated and cracked and inscribed that are among the earliest known signs of Chinese writings.

It also has early photographs, films and audio tracks.

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