Libraries in digital pact

Representatives of 20 national and research university libraries in Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Britain, Italy and the United States have agreed to collaborate on digitising library collections. The agreement, reached at an international conference in Kyoto on digital libraries convened by the US National Science Foundation, the British Library and the University of Kyoto, covers joint work on interoperable standards for metadata; pressure to streamline copyright for digitised materials; and agreement to lobby governments for the money to support digitisation projects. The meeting also agreed that unique treasures held by museums and libraries should have priority for digitisation and that these materials should then be made freely available through the internet.