$3 million as a gift for the Library of Congress from Google, meant to help the library start the World Digital Library.

The World Digital Library’s purpose is to digitize all the significant materials from libraries and institutions around the world and place them on the Web.

According to the librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, the World Digital Library will be a project inspired from the library’s American Memory Project which has been placing on the Web a lot of materials since it’s launching in 1994, like manuscripts of Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, the Gettysburg Address and Civil War photographs.

“We’re trying to recreate the memory of cultures that have much longer memories than we do,” Billington said. “The whole point is to get a world digital library that will bring, free of charge to anyone with Internet access, a series of Web sites that will seamlessly integrate materials of different cultures as much as possible.”

Billington also said for the New York Times that Google’s contribution will be used to “lay the initial groundwork for the project” and that there are no hidden intentions from the donor.