November 1997  

Indiana University Launches Digital Library Program 

Indiana University is launching a new digital library program designed to create and make available a wide range of electronic information resources to support the teaching and research of faculty members and students.

The comprehensive, collaborative program will integrate a variety of technologies and digital media into the university's learning environment, according to program officials. It will also make a number of the university's information resources available worldwide, and will contribute to national and international efforts to create a distributed digital library.

Involved in the program are the office of Information Technology, the IU Libraries, and the School of Library and Information Science, along with the Center for Copyright Management at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

In announcing the Digital Library, IU President Myles Brand said the program "represents a significant step in the successful development and distribution of the electronic technologies critical to teaching and learning at IU."

Michael McRobbie, Vice President for Information Technology, noted that IU is "committed to developing a digital library program that is prominent among those at educational institutions in the United States." He explained that with the rapid increase in worldwide networks, people will soon have access to massive libraries of digital text, sound, image, video and other special-purpose data.

"Since the technology for organizing, searching and retrieving data from these multimedia libraries is still in the early stages of development," he said, "the IU Digital Library Program will help promote the development and deployment of these technologies."

University Dean of Libraries Suzanne Thorin was Associate Librarian at the Library of Congress when its National Digital Library Program was developed. "A part of our program at IU," she said, "will focus on developing initiatives that will be useful to teachers and students in the K-12 schools throughout the state."

"For example, a sixth grade student in Lake County will be able to read a digitized image of the actual letter that George Washington wrote accepting the presidency of the United States -- a document available now only to those who come to the Lilly Library on IU's Bloomington campus," she noted.

"We now have an opportunity to make history come alive for students across the state and around the world."

IU also announces its membership in the Digital Library Federation (DLF), a national project administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources in Washington, D.C. As a member of DLF, IU joins an elite group of research libraries dedicated to developing digital libraries.

Also in connection with the Digital Library Program, the Dean of the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS), Blaise Cronin, said "a SLIS research team will study how digital libraries are used and the impact they have on faculty and students."

Leading the Digital Library Program's operations will be David Fenske, Director of the IU School of Music Library, and Gerry Bernbom, Assistant to the Vice President for Information Technology. Fenske is widely known in the digital library field for his development of "Variations," a multi-media digital collection that provides compact disc-quality digital audio in real time over the network in the IU School of Music Library -- the first such project in the United States.

IU's Digital Library Program has already attracted attention from potential funders and underwriters who will be critical for its future growth. Partnerships with the corporate and foundation communities are being developed to enhance the university's support of the initiative.

In forming the Digital Library Program, IU builds on the strength of its nationally and internationally renowned projects, including "Variations" and the Library Electronic Text Resources Services (LETRS), a joint project of the University Libraries and the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology. LETRS was created in 1993 to extend and expand support for scholarly texts in the humanities and serves as a focal point for members of the IU community interested in identifying, acquiring and using electronic resources for humanities research and teaching.