Texas Digital Library™ established

AUSTIN, Texas (July 13, 2005) - The University of Texas Libraries, Texas A & M University Libraries, the University of Houston Libraries, Texas Tech University Libraries and Rice University Libraries have entered into an agreement to establish the Texas Digital Library™ (TDL).

The Texas Digital Library™ seeks to assemble and provide for the benefit of society the combined technological advances and cultural and creative resources of the four major research university systems in Texas - Texas A & M University System, the University of Houston System, the Texas Tech University System and the University of Texas System. The resources of Rice University, Texas' other member of the Association of Research Libraries, will also contribute to the effort. While headquartered at the University of Texas Libraries at The University of Texas at Austin, the Texas Digital Library™ will operate in cooperation with the campuses of all the university systems in Texas.

By leveraging the resources of these major research university systems, the Texas Digital Library™ will offer a cost-effective venue for the assembly and delivery of information that will benefit a variety of communities, including K-12 students and their parents, university researchers and the corporations doing business within the state and interacting with its institutions of higher education.

The Texas Digital Library™ will

• reduce costly redundancies in licensing fees, digitization and access facilities, equipment, staff and operations through centralized licensing and delivery of information resources;
• ensure the most effective and efficient use of intellectual talent within the four major research university systems in Texas;
• ensure the most effective and efficient use of university research by corporations and businesses requiring expertise and technological resources to sustain and grow their business models in a competitive global environment;
• provide expertise and resources for the K-12 community;
• provide the infrastructure to and serve as a collaborator with educational, governmental and corporate entities in information access and delivery initiatives;
• preserve in one place, information for future generations of researchers, teachers, students and scholars.

"Intellectual capital - cost-effective and accessible - to those who must learn, create, innovate and do business in Texas is what the Texas Digital Library™ is all about," says Fred Heath, vice provost of the University of Texas Libraries. "This collaborative venture will not only benefit the institutions our systems represent and the communities they serve, but it will function as a portal for the innovative, technological synergy that until now has been so dispersed within our state."

The Texas Digital Library™ Web site will be introduced later this year. More specific details on content, as well as information on the variety of cooperative digital initiatives planned, will be made available in the coming weeks.