Foundations and Organization

The University of Kansas Digital Library Initiative supports scholars and educators in the cycle of discovery and innovation by making relevant information resources readily available electronically. As part of the overall university strategy to support scholarly endeavors, this initiative will identify specialized staff and tools to select, structure, create, offer intellectual access to, interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of digital works by adherence to established standards. The initiative will supplement, not supplant, existing processes and resources. It will complement and be compatible with state, national, and global digital library efforts.

The University of Kansas Digital Library Initiative facilitates the process of scholarly creation by providing a wide range of electronic resources supported by a common architecture and infrastructure. KU-DLI is a collaborative effort that leverages the University's institutional resources by focusing on projects that support the teaching and research of faculty, that support the learning and research of students, and that provide access to information resources for citizens of the state. KU-DLI provides an information toolkit that enables scholars to easily incorporate, manipulate, and edit selections from organized collections of digital resources directly into creative works.

Building on the foundation of the broad Vision and Mission statements, Principles define and shape the underlying values upon which the KU Digital Library Initiatives will be based:

Leadership: The successful Digital Library initiative reaches beyond the local environment to foster a broad perspective and to play a role in developments beyond the local level. The KU-DLI will seek to contribute to national developments by participating in the national forum and by creating and sharing a framework for Digital Library visualization and implementation that can be used as a model by others.

Collaboration: Building the successful KU-DL environment is an undertaking beyond the resources of any single unit of the University. The KU-DLI will be a collaborative effort that draws upon and leverages the creative and technical talents, and resources, of a wide range of staff and organizations across the institution and beyond.

Access: The intent of the KU-DL is to support and enhance the free flow of information and scholarly discourse. In order to support this free flow, the normal expectation for works contained in the KU-DL must be that they are intended for open use by the University community, and to the extent possible, beyond. Free and open access however, must take place within the framework of fair use and recognition of the rights of the work's copyright holder. As a corollary, users of KU-DL services and collections must be able to gain access to information while maintaining their own privacy, as is the case with the use of traditional library collections.

Diversity: The KU Digital Library will serve a diverse and substantial University constituency by developing, distributing, and sustaining a diverse range of services, collections, and delivery modes across disciplines and formats.

Durable Collections: Content will outlive generations of access, storage, and retrieval technology and data formats. The intent of selecting storage media and software should be to enable migration of content as technologies evolve so that information may be effectively preserved for future use without loss or distortion. The KU-DLI will focus not only on delivery of content using current best practice technologies, but on the long-term migration and preservation of locally-created content, as well.

Sustainable Architecture: The KU-DL is an environment that provides access to a diverse array of resources using an assortment of tools. While a variety of approaches to creating and managing content formats is unavoidable, and a wide array of specialized tools is expected, too great a diversity, without clear purpose, can drain already scarce resources and become, itself, a barrier to access. In order to minimize this situation, the KU-DLI will promote and support the use of standards and industry "best practices" in order to build a sustainable architectural environment for the University.

Management Focus: The digital library environment is not solely about building systems and amassing collections. It is also about supporting the full range of administrative, policy, business, and curatorial functions required by any library to manage, administer, monitor engagement with, and ensure fair use of its collections regardless of format or location. The KU-DLI will build upon and enhance existing structures to provide these functions.