Picture it: Reading Period, January 2010.

The final paper for your course on ancient Chinese art is due tomorrow, and before you head to the review session for your history class, it would probably be a good idea to look over those letters from 18th century pioneers traveling the Oregon Trail.

But it's already 1 a.m. Lamont Library is closed and Cabot Library does not have the materials you are looking for. What is a strapped-for-time but eager-to-learn undergraduate to do?

Enter the digital library.

You turn on your computer and head to the World Wide Web. Before you know it, you are scrolling through primary document after primary document, comparing 20 different Chinese silkscreens, and trying to decide which database to tap into.

For current undergraduates, information may not be quite so instantly available yet. But the Library Digital Initiative (LDI), a University-wide campaign announced earlier this year, has begun the work necessary to creating a digital library-an on-line centralized collection of materials hard to store and circulate through traditional "print" libraries.

"Everyone is very excited that Harvard is moving assertively toward the use of more digital content," says Nancy Cline, Larsen librarian of Harvard College and the chair of the LDI steering committee. "It's almost like exploring a new frontier in digital information."

Without a doubt, LDI is still very much in its beginning stages, even though the University has already made forays into digital technology. But LDI is much more ambitious than anything Harvard has attempted before.

When the project is finally completed and information becomes instantly available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to members of the Harvard community, Cline won't be the only person on campus excited about digital information.

Working for You

For Harvard students, a digital library means greater access to statistical information, databases, image banks, archives or letters too delicate to circulate through Widener Library, Cline says.

"One of the frustrations right now is that while this information can be available to students enrolled in certain courses, there are partitions put around much of the material," Cline says.

Several courses already use the Web to make images, data, and audio recordings available to their students, but LDI will take this information off of reserve and make it available to any Harvard affiliate.

"Most of the information is for people in a certain field. We want Harvard's digital library to be universally available," Cline says.

Mary Maples-Dunn, Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library, who is chairing a committee to review digital content proposals, says she has already received 19 proposals from a variety of Harvard museums and libraries.

"Most of them have some particular collection that they think would be particularly useful to have on the Web," Dunn says. "The projects are creative, innovative and interesting."