“How Do We Create a World Digital Library?”: The Politics and Promise of Inclusion in Inclusive Knowledge Societies

The World Digital Library (WDL), a collaborative initiative between the Library of Congress and UNESCO, sought to digitize and showcase the world’s “most important cultural treasures” on a single platform. This article examines the politics of the WDL, moving beyond questions of what content was in/excluded on the platform to investigate how and by whom content was selected, described, and presented. It argues that the infrastructural design of the WDL—specifically, its centralized digital architecture and knowledge organization system—significantly shaped the distribution of authority across institutions, determining who could meaningfully contribute to this purportedly global project. In doing so, the article positions knowledge organization systems not merely as perpetuators of historical biases but also as active agents that structure present-day conditions for equitable participation in the production and dissemination of knowledge.