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The Library Digital Enterprise

The Library Digital Enterprise will build the Library’s future in the digital age. It encompasses all areas of Library technology and digitization. The Library Digital Enterprise exists to meet the Library’s paired goals of obtaining a global reach for its resources and unlocking the content of its extensive special collections. These goals are supported by initiatives of many kinds throughout the Library system. Through collaboration and coordination, the Library digital enterprise will establish the principles and criteria to guide the Library in developing the digital collections and making innovative use of digital content supporting the teaching and research missions of the University and scholarly communities worldwide in the 21st century. The Library will provide the best possible access to the world’s natural and cultural heritage and the transmission and advancement of knowledge.  We seek gifts and other funding for the following comprehensive program:

• Library Digitization Program (gifts towards a $4 million endowment goal)
The Library Digitization program seeks to expand its already significant progress over the next two to three years.  By doing so, the Library will increase access to rare materials and unique collections, and support innovative uses of digital content.  There is a vast array of potential projects including audio-visual digitization and the digitization of cultural heritage collections, among many others.  There is a great need for digitization projects across the Library system focusing on the Library's special collections.  Among many rich and varied opportunities for digitization are those from the following collections:

The Library seeks expendable gifts and grant support at all levels.  We also seek to meet substantial endowment goals to ensure the continuity of key Library programs.  Among our priorities are:

• Portals of Discovery /Point of Need Virtual Services (gifts and grants of $50,000 per project)
The Library digital enterprise will integrate Library resources into the broader digital environment, organize access to the Library’s own diverse information resources through special web pages or “portals” and cross-collection searching capabilities. It will also deliver Library content and services to Yale faculty, students, and staff when and where they need them—whether through search engines like Google, social networking sources such as YouTube and FaceBook, Yale’s own course management systems, and through mobile technologies.

• Yale Daily News Digital Archive ($8,000 per publication year)
As the oldest college daily, the Yale Daily News has chronicled the histories of Yale, New Haven, and through them, the country and the world, since 1868. Yale Library is in the process of digitizing the back files of this extraordinary resource and making them accessible on the internet. We seek funding for year-to-year digitization, and encourage alumni classes to consider this project.

• Yale History Online (gift or grant of $200,000)
The Library is committed to increasing worldwide access to information about Yale students and to add to the existing library of Yale history online, the Library would like to digitize around 2,000 volumes from its Yale Publications Collection. Examples include Franklin B. Dexter’s Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, 1701-1815; the Catalogue of the Officers and graduates of Yale University, histories of individual Yale classes, Yale University course catalogs, university and alumni directories. These are among the most heavily used volumes, both by staff and researchers. We seek funding for preparation, digitization and the development and maintenance of a portal page. The long-term goal can be accomplished incrementally through small digitization projects focusing on a publication run or records for a particular class year.

• Persistent Access to Digital Resources (gifts and grants per project of $50,000 and up )
Increasingly, the products and tools of teaching and research, including those created at Yale, are “born digital”—art, music, electronic journals, project wikis, electronic theses and dissertations, statistical data sets, medical imaging, learning objects and other teaching tools, and even e-mail (the correspondence of the 21st century) are created and exist only in digital form. These resources, especially because they have no physical equivalents, are most at risk from technology obsolescence, deterioration of storage media, or loss. The Library seeks funding for digital preservation and archiving projects ensuring that present and future researchers will have access to the raw materials and finished products of contemporary knowledge creation and transmission.