FHSU, Forsyth Library & FLDCI
Forsyth Library is a small academic library serving the needs of
Fort Hays State University’s 11,000 full- and part-time students and
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275 faculty & staff members. Roughly 4,000 of those students are
traditional on-campus undergraduate and graduate students. The
other 7,000 students study through FHSU’s Virtual College, an online
degree program. The library is central to the Virtual College and
provides assistance to those students in the form of a dynamic web
presence that facilitates off-campus access to our OPAC, databases,
and digital collections. This digital content includes the digitized
Swigert documents, our Master’s Thesis Collection, letters from
Benjamin Franklin and historic glass-plate negatives collections. Our
first collection of materials was digitized in 2004. The Forsyth Library
Digital Collections Initiative (FLDCI) was established in 2008 in order
to facilitate the development and preservation of digital content.
Under the development of this framework of guidelines, we have been
able to create full-fledged digitization partnerships both within our
university, including the Sternberg Museum, and Graduate School,
and externally with institutions in Kansas. Our modest digital
collections are positioned to grow exponentially in the next few years,
and the establishment of the FLDCI promises to simplify the growth
process.