About – World Digital Library

World Digital Library LogoThe World Digital Library will launch next week, April 21st, 2009. According to the about page,

The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, archi­tectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research.

This project planning is supported by Google and the idea was originally proposed by the Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington in 2005. Canada does not seem to be part. Why is that?