The World Digital Library offers significant primary materials (books, photos, maps, manuscripts, video and sound recordings) from countries and cultures around the world. WDL is a new resource from our friends at the Library of Congress, with contributions by partner institutions in many countries; and the support of the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
You can browse by place, time, topic, type of item, and contributing institution, or you can do a keyword search. WDL includes many full-text books, some classic images, and a lot of just really interesting stuff. Take a look!