总有一天，走着去图书馆会被淘汰。然而，这一天还很遥远，因为从图书馆和其他来源数字化信息的趋势对许多大学和组织来说仍然是相对新的。数字图书馆的建立已经有4年的历史了。\n“我们在全国范围内得到了认可，我们的知名度也越来越高，”大学图书馆主任苏珊娜·索林(Suzanne Thorin)说。索林自1996年从美国国会图书馆来到印第安纳大学以来，一直在数字图书馆工作。\n该项目是由印第安纳大学图书馆、信息技术副总裁办公室、图书馆和信息科学学院以及大学信息技术服务部门共同努力的结果。但直到最近，这个项目才有了主管。8月1日，经过全国范围内的搜寻，克里斯汀·布兰科利尼被选为新的常任理事。她已经担任代理局长好几年了。索林说:“在全国范围内寻找合适的人选总是有帮助的。”“我们意识到我们拥有最适合这份工作的人之一，这是一件值得骄傲的事情。 She (Brancolini) now moves more into an administrative strategic role as director, and will be hiring a project director in the near future."\nBrancolini is not new to the campus ' in 1983, she began working at the Main Library in charge of media resources. Now, as director, she credits her experience with faculty and students for her success.\n"As a librarian, nothing you learn is ever lost," she said.\nNot only has Brancolini been in the field for 17 years ' she is also a mother of three and a spare-time video producer.\nBrancolini will report about the library to a steering committee: Thorin; Vice President for Information Technology Michael McRobbie; Dean of Library and Information Sciences Blaise Cronin and Copyright Management Center Director Kenneth Crews.\n"Her (Brancolini's) successful track record in building partnerships across campuses and among different departments will be a big plus," McRobbie said.\nThe steering committee hopes to use Brancolini's skills to meet the goal of integrating IU Bloomington's resources with the other campuses. The digital library is also aiming to incorporate and share information with other digital libraries on both the state and national level in the future.\nIU's digital library is a member of the Digital Library Federation, based in Washington, that unites 26 universities in their attempts to digitize information.\n"We also work with the Big 10 consortium of universities on projects," said Perry Willett, head of the Library Electronic Text Resource Service. Willett has worked on digitizing collections since he joined IU in 1992.\nThe digital library is composed of many different collections, which are groups of resources that deal with one topic of information. Current collections on the Web site include a documentation of the Russian Periodical Index, music of Hoagy Carmichael, the work-in-progress Victorian Women Writer's project and others.\n"We have been working on a collection of photos from the IU-Gary campus that document the growth of the U.S. Steel facility there as well as the town," Willett said. "We have also worked on acquiring collections from commercial publishers." There is currently a preview of the U.S. Steel project available on the Web site.\nEventually, students should be able to go to one Web site and search all of the digital libraries around the world for the information they need, Brancolini said.\n"There is a lot of work being done on how to search across the different digital libraries," Thorin said. "In terms of searching for resources, the tools on the Web are inadequate."\n Brancolini said she encourages students to visit the digital library Web site and make use its resources. \n"The digital library is more than just books online … it includes music, photos and many unique resources that can't be found in other places," Brancolini said. "We want students to give us feedback and make sure the library presents information in ways that communicate to them."\nHowever, the walk to the library is still necessary for now, as both Brancolini and Willett assured that conventional libraries will not be disappearing any time soon. \n"Given just the massive amounts of information we have in print, as well as other sources, regular libraries won't disappear any time in the foreseeable future," Willett said.
