The Harvard University Library is pleased to announce a gift from Mark and Yvonne Bregman, endowing The Mark and Yvonne Bregman Fund for the Preservation of Digital Information. The fund is the first such endowed fund in the Harvard University Library, and one of the first of its kind anywhere. It will be used to develop and apply technologies for the long-term archiving and preservation of electronic collections.

Research libraries are beginning to collect a great amounts of information that is digital in its original form. While digital materials have the promise of supporting greatly enhanced access and innovative new uses, they suffer the threat of becoming unusable in a dramatically shorter time frame than traditional print materials, largely because of the relentless pace of technological change.

The Bregman fund will assist the Harvard libraries in addressing the particular preservation issues raised by electronic materials. "If research libraries are to continue to fulfill their traditional role of long-term archiving, they must soon face up to the need for concerted and systematic action to protect the long-term viability of digital information resources," said Sidney Verba, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and director of the Harvard University Library.

"This is a new field and will obviously be of growing significance to research libraries," Verba noted. "It combines the old with the new -- the speed and convenience of digital information and the concern of libraries with the capture and preservation of information for centuries to come."

Preservation of digital resources within the Harvard University Library system will be undertaken in conjunction with the Library Digital Initiative (LDI).