The Texas Digital Library was formed in 2005 by four Texas members of the Association of Research Libraries. It has extended membership in the consortium to any of the state’s institutions of higher learning and now includes eighteen member institutions that pool their resources to produce the technical and policy infrastructure necessary to support digital library and scholarly communication services.

The TDL offers numerous benefits to its members and the larger scholarly community. These include:

• the increased accessibility of the scholarly work produced at member institutions
• the on-going preservation of intellectual assets for future generations of researchers, teachers, students, and scholars
• the reduction of cost burdens through the sharing of monetary and technical resources
• the creation of a platform for innovation and improvement of scholarly communication tools and processes
• a competitive advantage for seeking research funding