The Digital Library Federation (originally known as the National Digital Library Federation) exists under the organizational umbrella of the Council on Library and Information Resources. The Federation was founded in 1995 by 12 major university research libraries and the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the New York Public Library, and the Commission on Preservation and Access. The Research Libraries Group (RLG) and the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) are formal allies of the Federation.
The Federation’s mission is to bring together digitized materials documenting the evolution of the USA’s heritage and cultures. That material will be made accessible to students, scholars, and people everywhere. Some of the Federation’s major goals are:
the implementation of a distributed, open digital library that will be available through the global Internet;
the establishment of a collaborative management structure to coordinate and guide the implementation and ongoing maintenance of the digital library;
the formation of selection guidelines that have appropriate focus, but remain sufficiently flexible and open‐ended to accommodate local initiatives and projects;
the adoption of common standards and best practices to ensure full informational capture; and
to guarantee universal accessibility, simplify retrieval and navigation, and facilitate the archiving process.
As presented on the home page, the major subsections of the Web site are devoted to the Federation’s charter, organization, strategic plan and initiatives, as well as presentations and publications.
The subsection on organization provides links to information on the principles of the organization, its by‐laws and the membership structure. The subsection on strategic planning summarizes and updates previous planning approaches. Details of the current plan (March 1998) are given, describing Digital Library Federation priorities and defining the projects and plans currently being pursued.
The subsection on presentations gives a lot of information about recent presentations on behalf of the Federation, with the accompanying slides. Of the remaining subsections (Initiatives, Reference Materials, and Publications) little material has been added.
The site is very clearly laid out, colourful, and attractively designed. Navigation is particularly easy because there is a menu of links to the major subsections of the site on almost all pages.
The text of the pages is well written. This site will be of particular appeal to the academic library community throughout the world.
