Pop quiz! What might people remember from 2001? Here’s a few major events to jog their memory: Wikipedia launched on January 15, Apple released the first iPod in October and the first Lord of the Rings film was released in December.

Closer to home, a collaborative project between J. Willard Marriott Library and Utah State Historical Society gave rise to a new collaboration that is still going strong –  the Mountain West Digital Library (MWDL). When the Marriott Library and Utah State Historical Society (USHS) first worked together to digitize the Shipler Commercial Photographers collection of glass plate negatives for public access and preservation, they didn’t stop there. With the support and leadership of Utah Academic Library Consortium (UALC), a four-member consortium formed comprising University of Utah, Brigham Young University, Southern Utah University and Utah State University.

The founding purpose was both practical and ambitious: to improve access to digitized cultural heritage materials by bringing together collections from across the Intermountain West in a single search interface. At a time when many libraries, museums, archives and historical societies were beginning to digitize unique materials from their archives and special collections departments, MWDL offered a shared technological framework for making those materials easier to find.

A federal grant awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) allowed additional institutions to pursue digitization projects. MWDL soon welcomed members from Utah and other western states, including Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Wyoming. This collaboration placed MWDL at the center of development for library digitization workflows and descriptive standards. By 2011, College & Research Libraries News described MWDL as “an essential resource for any student of the American West,” a phrase that reflected its growing importance as a regional gateway to historical materials.

Since 2015, MWDL’s members have adopted a membership model to ensure sustainability and independence from term-limited funding as well as a shared governance body representing the interests of UALC, members and partners to guide the program’s leadership.

Twenty-five years later, Marriott Library continues to host and administer MWDL on behalf of its members as one of the Utah Academic Library Consortium (UALC)’s flagship programs. Over one million digital items are freely discoverable through MWDL’s site. MWDL’s history is best understood as a story of cooperation, access and adaptation. Since 2001, it has helped institutions across the Mountain West share their digital collections more widely while sustaining the standards, partnerships and infrastructure needed for long-term discovery.

MWDL’s reach expanded nationally in 2012, when it was selected as one of the first six members of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Former MWDL Program Director, Sandra McIntyre, wrote at that time, “We are very excited about being involved … We believe much of our success in the Mountain West Digital Library is due to the tiered structure of our collaborative.” This tiered structure carried forwards; DPLA launched in 2013 and MWDL became an on-ramp for libraries, museums and archives in the Mountain West to share their materials through a national digital library. This helped connect local and regional collections to a broader public, and even international, audiences.