December 17, 2009 -- A recent video (external link) from the Voice of America draws attention to the expanding role of digital materials at the Library of Congress.

"VOA was interested in hearing about how digital technologies were changing the traditional role of the Library," said Jane Mandelbaum, a Library of Congress information technology specialist who is featured in the video. "They wanted to examine how the Library was evolving from the world’s largest library in terms of traditional paper formats to becoming the host of the world’s largest digital collection."

The video describes the Library as now hosting "an ocean of digital information" that encompasses more than 50 million individual files.

"A terabyte is about 1600 CDs, or about 330 hours of TV, or about 2000 books," says Mandelbaum in the video, describing the size of the Library’s rapidly expanding digital collections. "And we have about 200 of those terabytes on our website and about 500 terabytes that we keep in our long-term preservation systems."

Also featured in the video is senior systems engineer Thomas Youkel, who leads the camera crew on a tour of the Library’s data center, helping to explain how the Library is addressing the impact of changing technology, and Colleen Cahill, a digital conversion coordinator in the Geography and Maps division, discussing the Library’s efforts to digitize portions of its sizable map collection.