A 21st century approach to building a strategic digital content infrastructure for Yale University must include a plan for sustainability that reflects the values of community effort, is built on technological innovation, and encourages reusability and openness. It requires a substantial and appropriate investment of resources for start-up development, ongoing services, and capital replacement costs. Sustainable infrastructure is the composite of selective content, agreed upon policies, engagement of stakeholders and experts, and enterprise technology platforms and tools.

The combination of these four essential components creates the coherent infrastructure for a sustainable digital ecosystem. Add to this integration a willing cultural shift toward shared resources management and an environment of sustainability will be created for Yale University.

• Digital content includes data, images, audio, video, and metadata from various departments, in support of research, teaching, and learning. Our focus on content includes digital capture, management, and preservation; asset storage; and dissemination. 

• Technology that supports digital content traditionally has been built and supported in separate systems across the campus. Our goal is to increase interaction between systems, offer shared solutions where possible, and provide aggregation for digital content so it can be more easily found. 

• The creation and uptake of shared policies and practice in such areas as intellectual property management and descriptive metadata are essential components of the ecosystem.

• The community of practitioners and experts are in the libraries and museums and includes creators of digital content who are managing digital resources throughout campus departments.  Brought together, we create partnerships and increased capacity based on common needs and goals.