About LEARN: Activities & Accomplishments

Preserving and Sharing Digital Archives For Future Generations

The Riley Digitization Center of the Baylor University Library has digitized over 400 terabytes of music, newspapers, athletics materials, scores, maps, historic notebooks and other materials relevant to the Baylor community and to researchers. While these materials are available locally through digitalcollections.baylor.edu, the "dark archive" of this data resides with the Texas Digital Library (TDL) for safekeeping. The LEARN network transports this massive amount of data from Baylor to the TDL.

One of these digital collections is a rare atlas, originally published in 1895, containing 175 plates that detail the history of the Civil War. This invaluable historical resource is in the holdings of The Texas Collection at Baylor University, but is also shared online with the world as part of Baylor's digital collections. The U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Virginia recently used these maps to conduct a training exercise based on Major General McClellan's 1862 Peninsula Campaign to enhance the military planning skills of field officers from all branches of the United States military.

The LEARN network will continue to play a key role as Baylor and other LEARN members continue their efforts of converting historically important records to a digital format. These important efforts will allow these treasures to be shared and enjoyed by people around the world and to be preserved digitally for future generations.