On 8 January 2009, Instituto Camões launched the Luís de Camões Digital Library, making over 1200 historic documents available on the internet, referring to the last five centuries of Portuguese history.
The goal of this initiative is to make scanned documents from literary texts, musical scores and scientific studies, access to which had been reserved, available to the Portuguese speaking community.
In a press release, Instituto Camões announced that texts from the great Portuguese authors, deceased for over 70 years, will also be made available (authors whose works are already in the public domain). It is believed that this new tool will have ''decisive importance for a linguistic community of over 220 million speakers'' and also for ''a growing number of people who, throughout the world, are interested in Portuguese culture and want to study Portuguese''.
Further information:
- Nota de imprensa: ''Biblioteca Digital Camões disponibiliza 1200 documentos em linha'' http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/noticias-ic-portugal/biblioteca-digital-camoes-disponibiliza-1200-documentos-em-linha.html
- Biblioteca Digital Luís de Camões http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/cvc/conhecer/biblioteca-digital-camoes.html
