A new unit in the University Libraries, Digital Library Services (DLS), was created in March 2006, dedicated to the development of digital library resources at the University.  The Digital Library director and head of DLS, Andrew Rouner, comes most recently from the University of Richmond.  He worked there on an IMLS grant in partnership with the Perseus Project at Tufts University. Prior to that he was a project manager at the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia where he received his Ph.D. in religious studies in 2004.

Within a month, Digital Library Services expanded to two people, with the addition of Cassandra Stokes as Systems Analyst, a recent graduate of the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin, who was most recently an intern at the Library of Congress.  A third person, Ruth Lewis, devotes 20% of her time to metadata development for the unit, in addition to her primary responsibilities as the subject librarian for Biology.

While a unit of the library, DLS is charged with assisting the development of digital projects across the University by collaborating with others in various schools and departments, particularly the Humanities Digital Workshop in Arts & Sciences.  DLS is also responsible for administering the Washington University Digital Gateway, which identifies primary digital collections at the University, provides information to those considering digital projects, and houses the developing digital library of materials hosted directly on the site.  The site was recently revised and went live September 1, 2006.  While at present the collections page consists only of links to projects around the University, the site will soon be hosting materials directly on the site, as some of the many projects in the works are developed.

The first such project will be transcripts of interviews conducted for the seminal civil rights documentary series, Eyes on the Prize, which comes from the Hampton Collection at the Film and Media Archive in the University Libraries.  These interviews will be searchable through the indexing software, DLXS, recently licensed for the digital library.  In addition to assisting in several digital projects in development, DLS is also in the process of developing an infrastructure for the digital library content production and delivery, of which DLXS will be a significant piece.  It is hoped the installation of DLXS will be complete, and the interviews available in October, 2006, with several other projects to follow.  DLS is available to consult on the development of digital projects at all levels, and welcomes any inquiries from the Washington University community. For more information, contact Andrew Rouner, arouner@wustl.edu or 935-4022.