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The term Digital Library refers to a wide array of different organisations and collections that share the common trait of exposing digital content to a community of users. Digital libraries are applied in many different contexts ranging from academic institutions to public libraries, archives, museums and industries. The type of content that is stored in digital libraries varies depending on the organisation, it can either be reproduction of physical objects or content which is "born digital".

The vision of a national digital library has been circulating among librarians, scholars, educators, and private industry representatives since the early 1990s, but it has not yet materialized. Efforts led by a range of organizations, including the Library of Congress, HathiTrust, and the Internet Archive, have successfully built resources that provide books, images, historical records, and audiovisual materials to anyone with Internet access. Many universities, public libraries, and other public-spirited organizations have digitized materials that could be brought together under the frame of the DPLA, but these digital collections often exist in silos.

"The Alexandria Digital Research Library (ADRL) is UC Santa Barbara Library's home for collections of digital research materials, including images, text, streamed media, and numeric and spatial data. This comprehensive digital library, when complete, will provide access to millions of hidden digital research assets in UCSB Library's possession, and serve as a single search access point."

DIGITAL LIBRARIES Capturing images of manuscripts, art, and artifacts, digital libraries are an excellent way of both preserving the past and sharing it with everyone.

"The Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican Library) have joined efforts in a landmark digitization project with the aim of opening up their repositories of ancient texts. Over the course of the next four years, 1.5 million pages from their remarkable collections will be made freely available online to researchers and to the general public."

"The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center works to create and provide free access to digital resources that support the teaching and research needs of the UW community, uniquely document the university and State of Wisconsin, and possess broad research value. Read More"

The Universal Digital Library. Million Book Collection   

The Digital Union, part of Learning Technology in the Office of the Chief Information Officer, provides support for teaching and learning with technology. It is located on the third floor of the Science and Engineering Library and is a partnership of University Libraries and the Office of the CIO.

The vision for EdITLib, the Digital Library for Education & Information Technology, is to facilitate learning, discovery and innovation by connecting scholarly research on Educational Technology/E-Learning with learning opportunities.

The DPLA Steering Committee is leading the first concrete steps toward the realization of a large-scale digital public library that will make the cultural and scientific record available to all.

"The History of Science and Technology Collection brings together in digital facsimile two categories of primary and secondary publications: writings about scientific research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and unique or valuable titles in science and technology held by the UW-Madison libraries. "

NYPL Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 800,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.

"WorldCat® Discovery Services provide a new suite of cloud-based applications that brings the FirstSearch® and WorldCat® Local services together. The suite will enable people to discover more than 1.66 billion electronic, digital and physical resources in libraries around the world through a single search of both WorldCat® and a central index that represents nearly 2,000 e-content collections. This will make it possible for 18,000+ FirstSearch libraries to offer a richer discovery experience."

the world's libraries connected

OpenGLAM.org is an initiative run by the Open Knowledge Foundation that promotes free and open access to digital cultural heritage held by Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums.

Project MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and social sciences content; since 1995, its electronic journal collections have supported a wide array of research needs at academic, public, special, and school libraries worldwide. MUSE books and journals, from leading university presses and scholarly societies, are fully integrated for search and discovery.