Minutes of the meetings of the Trustees of Indiana University dating to 1980 can now be accessed via the World Wide Web, thanks to a cooperative project of the Office of University Archives and Records Management, the Office of the Board of Trustees, and the Indiana University Digital Library Program.

Representing about 10,000 pages of documents, many of which were previously available only to those who visited the university's archives, the minutes may be searched onlineby keyword and date, or browsed by year. The digitization project introduces a key benefit to researchers who otherwise pored through files or scanned online minutes of meetings for recent years.

"I am especially pleased at the inclusion of an effective search engine, which transforms the minutes from an almost impenetrable mass of information into a valuable resource, both within Indiana University and for our external constituents," says Robin Roy Gress, secretary of the Board of Trustees. "This is an elegant and effective solution to a problem that universities across the country are dealing with."

"The Board minutes are an important university resource, and the Archives staff is elated to make the minutes more widely accessible to the IU community," says University Archivist Phil Bantin. This project, he says, "fits perfectly into the Archives mission to promote knowledge and understanding of the history, programs, and goals of Indiana University."

The Archives house the paper copies of the minutes from 1835 to the present, and plans are under way to digitize those documents as well—except, that is, for the years from 1859 to1883, which were destroyed in the campus fire of 1883 at IU's former location at Seminary Square.

"Digitizing the board minutes has the additional advantage of generating a backup copy of the minutes in case anything ever happens to the paper copies," says Bantin.

The minutes include official acts, resolutions, policies, agreements, and other business records pertaining to the governance of Indiana University.

The board holds the university's financial, physical, and human assets and operations in trust for future generations. Its membership, terms of office, responsibilities, powers, and electoral procedures are governed by the Indiana State Code. The current nine-member board meets nine times a year on various campuses around the state.

The Indiana University Digital Library Program is dedicated to the production, maintenance, delivery, and preservation of a wide range of high-quality networked resources. Its services and projects support the teaching and research of Indiana University faculty, support the learning and research of Indiana University students, and foster research about the digital library.

This digitization project is part of an ongoing effort by the IUB Libraries to make the unique materials held by the IUB Libraries available online.

To search the minutes, go to: http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/iubot/