MEET OUR PUBLIC ONLINE LIBRARIES:
- Oceania Bioregion Library – weaving island ecologies, ancestral navigation systems.
- Asia Bioregion Library – connecting Austronesian migrations and plant medicine exchanges.
- Africa Bioregion Library – exploring transoceanic spiritual parallels and desert-maritime cosmologies.
- America Bioregion Library – tracing Pacific navigators’ influence on pre-Columbian coastal settlements.
- Europe Bioregion Library – mapping maritime mythology and shared astronomical heritages.
- Arctic Bioregion Library – linking circumpolar seafaring knowledge and migratory pathways.
The Worldwide Library Initiative (WLI) is a global public library dedicated to preserving, organizing, and sharing the totality of human knowledge — past, present, and future. It is conceived as a living network of digital and physical libraries that reflect the full spectrum of human creativity, science, and culture. The WLI integrates all expressions of human understanding into one continuous and evolving system of knowledge.
The Worldwide Library stands as the mother library of humanity, the foundational matrix from which all other libraries emerge. Within this global framework, we are developing the first constellation of bioregional libraries that embody the ecological, cultural, and scientific identity of each region of the Earth. These bioregional branches form part of The World Bioregional Libraries Project, the first project born from the Worldwide Library Initiative. The first of these libraries include the Mayan Library at www.mayanlibrary.org, the Mexican Library at www.mexicanlibrary.org, and the Bioregional Library Network at www.bioregiones.org, each serving as a local expression of the global vision we call the Worldwide Library Initiative.
The initiative merges traditional knowledge systems, scientific discovery, and artificial intelligence into a single universal framework of access and preservation. By combining AI-powered cataloging, semantic search, multilingual metadata, and intelligent digital indexing, it creates a living infrastructure capable of connecting information across disciplines, languages, and time. Our approach ensures that knowledge — whether dispersed, fragile, or intangible — can be organized, rediscovered, and linked in meaningful ways while preserving its authenticity, ecological context, and human significance.
The WLI uses modern technology not as a replacement for human memory but as a vessel for its continuity. This global library honors both the precision of science and the intuition of wisdom. It recognizes ancestral knowledge and indigenous sciences as essential to our collective memory, while equally embracing contemporary research, emerging technologies, and future innovation. Every domain of human inquiry — from art to astronomy, from botany to architecture, from mythology to quantum theory — finds its place within the Worldwide Library.
Knowledge is treated as a living ecosystem: interconnected, inclusive, and always expanding. The Worldwide Library Initiative collaborates with libraries, universities, archives, research institutions, cultural councils, and communities around the world. Together, we preserve knowledge not as static data but as living heritage — a shared resource that grows through cooperation, curiosity, and respect. The WLI invites the participation of all who value learning, from scholars and creators to local communities and innovators, uniting them through a common mission: to protect and advance the collective intelligence of humanity.
Donate to our Public Library Initiative:
If you wish to support this vision, we are currently launching the first bioregional project, the Mayan Library, which represents the first chapter of The World Bioregional Libraries. Contributions can be made through our official GoFundMe campaign at https://www.gofundme.com/f/mayan-library.
*Every donation helps us digitize rare manuscripts, restore cultural archives, document oral histories, and preserve the scientific, artistic, and ecological wisdom of our world.
The Worldwide Library Initiative envisions a planet where knowledge transcends frontiers and generations, where every culture and discipline contributes to a shared architecture of understanding. It is a long-term effort to weave together the memory of our species — scientific, cultural, artistic, and spiritual — into a living system of knowledge for all time. United not divided by frontier, but united by nature.
© Josef Sánchez – Founder, Worldwide Library Initiative
References
- Agrawal, A. (2002). Indigenous knowledge and the politics of classification. International Social Science Journal, 54(173), 287–297. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2451.00382
- Chigwada, J. (2024). Librarians’ role in the preservation and dissemination of Indigenous knowledge. Library Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1177/03400352231217270
- Doerr, M., & Tzitzikas, Y. (2012). Information carriers and identification of information objects: An ontological approach. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/1201.0385
- Fredriksson, M. (2021). India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library and the challenge of safeguarding knowledge. PMC. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9999701/
- Gates, B. (2023, March 21). The age of AI has begun. GatesNotes. https://www.gatesnotes.com/the-age-of-ai-has-begun
- Gates, B. (2023, July 11). The risks of artificial intelligence are real but manageable. GatesNotes. https://www.gatesnotes.com/meet-bill/tech-thinking/reader/the-risks-of-ai-are-real-but-manageable
- Gates, B. (2024). Bill Gates talks about the impact and future of AI. AARP. https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/television/bill-gates-future-of-artificial-intelligence-health-care/
- Kanaujia Sukula, S., & Singh, R. (2025). Indigenous Knowledge and Digital Libraries: A case of changing contexts and curiosities. In Transforming Academic Libraries (pp. 39–58). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8957-7_3
- Metoyer-Duran, C. (n.d.). Indigenous systems of knowledge and information science. In her work on Indigenous librarianship and culturally grounded taxonomy projects.
- Nadia, U., Rosly, N. E., Sahriman, S. H., & Zakiah, A. (2025). Digital preservation in digital libraries: A systematic literature review. International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, IX(I), 4186–4199. https://doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2025.9010326
- Nakata, N. M., Hamacher, D. W., Warren, J., Byrne, A., Pagnucco, M., Harley, R., … & Bolt, R. (2014). Using modern technologies to capture and share Indigenous astronomical knowledge. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/1409.1307
- Payette, S., & Lagoze, C. (2013). Flexible and extensible digital object and repository architecture (FEDORA). arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.1258
- Van Der Meer, S., Smith, S., & Pang, V. (2016). The use of ICT to preserve Australian Indigenous culture and language: A preliminary proposal using the Activity Theory Framework. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.01436
- World Wide Library Initiative (2025). The Mayan Library. Retrieved from https://open.substack.com/mayanlibrary/
MEET OUR PUBLIC ONLINE LIBRARIES:
- Oceania Bioregion Library – weaving island ecologies, ancestral navigation systems.
- Asia Bioregion Library – connecting Austronesian migrations and plant medicine exchanges.
- Africa Bioregion Library – exploring transoceanic spiritual parallels and desert-maritime cosmologies.
- America Bioregion Library – tracing Pacific navigators’ influence on pre-Columbian coastal settlements.
- Europe Bioregion Library – mapping maritime mythology and shared astronomical heritages.
- Arctic Bioregion Library – linking circumpolar seafaring knowledge and migratory pathways.