RLG's Cultural Materials Initiative

Abstract

RLG members have formed a "Cultural Materials Alliance" to develop a pool of digitized research materials and a coherent, integrated discovery service. Alliance members are identifying best practices to create and describe digital surrogates and a rights-management framework addressing institutional intellectual-property mandates. The paper outlines the issues addressed in developing this new research resource that will promote "cultural heritage" in an unprecedented way. Examples from the RLG Cultural Materials service to be released later in 2001 will illustrate the work done so far.