DL4U will have an unlimited collection of information resources. These will include traditional works currently in or accessible from the University Libraries (including ISI Citation Databases, Scholarly Communications Project publications, OCLC Electronic Collections Online). In addition, works will be available from the research partners such as Dow Chemical's technical reports and National Agricultural Library. DL4U is unique in that it will also contain the original contributions from our faculty/staff/students' as authors.

Challenges to expanding and maintaining DL4U, the main collection (MDL4U), the personal collections (PDL4U), and the unlimited resource possibilities, include:

1. Adding original contributions and digitizing existing information resources (not adding real duplicates, links become retrievals/additions, etc.)
2. Standards--formats for all media
3. Preservation and archiving
4. Ranking existing and incoming works for authenticity and quality (other measures?)
5. Making DL4U usable through to-be-determined visual and aural presentations

Solutions:

1. Building on ETD experiences; derive metadata and cataloging from authors' submissions; demonstrate success through contributions of 30 DL4U faculty investigators; courseware contributions grow through promotion of EReserve and VTOnline; students of faculty investigators and virtual corporation employees contribute works and become enthusiastic about assisting with ranking works and participating in design of DL4U
2. Main DL4U determines and recommends standards that will enable access to broadest base of users (intellectual property issues to be addressed, if not resolved); PDL4U can contain anything
3. MDL4U collaborates to determine when formats need to be upgraded and to what
4. Partner with PNNL to research, experiment, test, and recommend ranking mechanisms
5. Collaborate with HCI partners to research, experiment, test, recommend and in some cases implement (e.g., SCP publications) best-practices