A decade ago many people were shrieking at the thought of a mouse—a computer mouse—invading the stacks. But instead of shooing away the Internet, many libraries embraced it.

“Librarians were some of the earliest adoptors and promoters of the Internet and e-content,” says William Walker, University librarian. “We cofounded the Coalition for Networked Information in the early 1990s to ensure that libraries were front and center in the digital revolution.”

UM Libraries is indeed front and center, allocating much of its own budget and securing outside funding for online projects. More than $750,000 is earmarked for digital projects this year alone, Walker says. This includes $500,000 toward Imagebase, a digitization of art history and School of Architecture slides to enable Web delivery of the images in the classroom.

Imagebase is among many online projects offered by UM Libraries’ Digital Initiatives department. Some are samplings of larger library holdings, designed to whet the user’s appetite for what’s available at the physical library. The UM Legacy project, for example, contains a portion of the Special Collections’ holdings of University documents from the mid-1920s through 2000. Others, such as the online Caribbean studies journal Anthurium, exist only on the Web.

“Digitization is making hidden collections accessible,” says Yolanda Cooper, deputy University librarian and head of Digital Initiatives. “It’s like Google—you do a search and find things you didn’t know existed.”

One of UM Libraries’ first digitization projects was CHC Digital. “We digitized about 14,000 objects, but that was just the tip of the iceberg,” says Maria Estorino, interim head of Special Collections and former project director for CHC Digital.

The ability to scan, label, categorize, and post a portion of the massive Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC) came from a 1999 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. This year UM Libraries earned a State of Florida grant to digitize manuscripts in that collection.

Faculty members like Lillian Manzor and Robin Bachin are creating new online archives with help from the Richter Library’s Digital Media Lab and UM Libraries’ Digital Library Fellowship grants. There are presently a dozen or so projects in Digital Initiatives, with more on the way.

Judging from the volume of activity in the Richter Library every day, it’s certain that the mouse has been more friend than foe. To tour the cyber-stacks, visit www.library.miami.edu and click on “All E-Resources.”