has an interest in multimedia distribution, maintaining secure networks, increasing bandwidth, and serving its audience better.

Between 1990 and 1994, the Library experimented with a pilot project called the American Memory Project to make digital surrogates of key documents held by the Library. Out of that project, the National Digital Library Program was born. The NDLP had more than 100 employees as of April 1999 and an annual budget of $12 million. Its goal is to digitize 5 million items within 5 years.³⁴ The NDLP has made astute use of the tremendous popular appeal of the documents in its collection to garner private support. It aims to provide materials for educational purposes for children from kindergarten through high school—audiences that have hitherto been largely outside the focus of the Library (see Box 2.2). To meet this challenge, the NDLP has depended on a mix of LC staff and contractors. As a project-based program, the NDLP is not required to provide the long-term service functions that LC must normally provide.

Apart from working to achieve its immediate goals, the NDLP has worked to bring in outside sources of support and content. Ameritech has supported creating collections that are physically located at other institutions but intellectually integrated with NDLP resources at LC. The Mellon Foundation is seeking to make available digital content that does not reside at LC. Digital materials created by projects such as the Making of America (Cornell University and the University of Michigan) are under consideration for inclusion. The NDLP has a general vision but no formal, central plan for selecting materials or creating links between various materials. For some collecting areas, having digital surrogates available is a benefit—in the Prints and Photographs or Geography and Map Divisions, for instance. In others, the capability would be apt to provide access to materials otherwise difficult to see on account of access restrictions or concerns for preservation—the materials from the Law Library, for instance. For still other areas, such as the Manuscript Division, having digital surrogates provides exposure but in and of itself does not yet benefit users.

Thompson Technology is providing repository software for the NDLP with an Oracle database system, a search engine, and tools for managing metadata. The Library’s Information Technology Services Directorate has been involved in an advisory capacity in this development but has not

Front Matter (R1-R18)

Executive Summary (1-22)

1. Digital Revolution, Library Evolution (23-49)

2. The Library of Congress: From Jefferson to the Twenty-First Century (50-81)

3. Building Digital Collections (82-104)

4. Preserving a Digital Heritage (105-121)

5. Organizing Intellectual Access to Digital Information: From Cataloging to Metadata (122-143)

6. The Library of Congress and the World, Beyond Its Walls (144-162)

7. Management Issues (163-192)

8. Information Technology Infrastructure (193-213)

Afterword (214-216)

Bibliography (217-240)

Appendix A: Biographies of Committee Members (241-252)

Appendix B: Briefers at Plenary Meetings and Site Visits (253-260)

Appendix C: List of Letters Received (261-261)

Appendix D: Acronyms (262-266)