WDL Organization

The WDL is governed by a charter that was approved by partners in April of 2010. Each partner must sign the charter. A list of WDL partners is available on the World Digital Library. The charter is available in the following languages:

Charter in Arabic (Word document)
Charter in Chinese (Word document)
Charter in English (Word document)
Charter in French (Word document)
Charter in Portuguese (Word document)
Charter in Russian (Word document)
Charter in Spanish (Word document)

Executive Council

The WDL charter provides for a seven-person Executive Council. Two of the members are ex officio: the Director-General of UNESCO or her representative, and the director of the institution serving as the WDL project manager (at present, the Library of Congress). The other five members of the Executive Council were elected by WDL partners at the annual meeting in Washington on June 22-23, 2010.

Executive Council Members

Ismail Serageldin, Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Chair
Abdulla bin Ali Al-Thani, Vice President for Education, Qatar Foundation
Barbara Schneider-Kempf, General Director, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
Muniz Sodré de Araújo Cabral, President, National Library of Brazil
Wei Dawei, Deputy Director, National Library of China
Director-General of UNESCO or her representative, ex officio
James Billington, Librarian of Congress, ex officio

Project Management Office at the Library of Congress

As stated in the charter the WDL shall have an institutional Project Manager, selected from among interested Contributors. The term of the Project Manager is five years, and may be renewed. The Project Manager will recruit and retain the project management and technical staff needed to maintain the WDL and to facilitate its growth. The Project Manager will be responsible for the personnel, hardware, and software costs associated with the maintenance of www.wdl.org. The Project Manager will inform the Executive Council of its activities and consult closely with the Executive Council on matters relating to the expansion and maintenance of the WDL. The Project Manager may request other Contributors to assist in the fulfillment of these tasks, under arrangements to be worked out between the Project Manager and these Contributors, in consultation with the Executive Council as appropriate. The Library of Congress shall serve as the Project Manager for the first term. Thereafter, the Executive Council shall select the Project Manager. The Project Manager serves until replaced.

Selected WDL Project Management Staff

The staff listed below are a subset of the WDL project team at the Library of Congress. These staff members are most likely to communicate with partners. The team at the Library of Congress consists of many more people including software developers, digital conversion specialists, reference specialists, translators, curators, researchers, editors, and writers.

John Van Oudenaren, Director
Jason Yasner, Operations Manager
Michelle Rago, Product Manager
Sandy Bostian, Content Manager
Allison Zhang, Metadata Manager
Isabelle Delabre, Translation Coordinator
Cecilia Penaloza, Program Specialist
William Hawk, Program Specialist

Committees

WDL committees are comprised of representatives from partner institutions. There are currently three standing committees.