Georgetown University is both a symbolic and veritable model of excellence. It is consistently rated among the top research universities in the United States, and its year-on-year growth in applications for admission speaks to the demand for its outstanding academics. We at Lauinger Library strive not merely to equal this excellence but especially to transform the modes in which our students, staff and faculty can achieve their scholarly aspirations.

Not everything we accomplish can depend on strength of willl, desire to improve, and University funds. All libraries are supported by their parent institutions, and we are very fortunate that the University Library is such a valued enterprise at Georgetown. But the generosity of our many donors has enabled us to begin the ascent from excellent to transformational services. You have given us gifts that allow us to purchase more specialized materials, bring experts to campus, install new technology, offer new services. As with any business or educational enterprise, financial stability and growth potential are crucial to our success.

Libraries in today's constantly changing technological world are doing much more than ever before, and while some of our accomplishments are directly attributable to the extraordinary staff we have recruited and retained, we are equally reliant on and indebted to those thousands of you who have helped us build our assets for the future.

How do we use the funds you contribute? How might a simple donation help the library achieve its goals? Here are just a few examples of how your generosity makes a difference for our users:

• Alumni Hoya editors raised funds to digitize 20 years' worth of our prominent student newspaper. In addition to reminiscences of Georgetown between 1959-1980, the digitized Hoya allows study of the social history of students in Washington D.C.--from a desktop computer.
• A recent graduate persuaded an anonymous benefactor to donate funds that purchased state-of-the-art computer monitors for the Gelardin New Media Center. Our faculty and studeents increasingly use multimedia, and better tools help produce better research, better scholarship, and better art.

• Contributions to a Technology Endowment provide us with refresher funds to keep our computers and printers upgraded and accessible to our users 24 hours a day. For the denizens of our building on the "nine to five" (that's p.m. to a.m.) schedule, the access is crucial.
• When extraordinary items appear on the auction block, your contributions enable us to bid for special collections. Many of our students and faculty capitalize on the primary source research opportunities in the Special Collections Research Center, and are contributing new scholarship to the world of information. Last year a portion of a student's American Studies senior thesis on the print works of Grace Albee, well represented in our collections, was published in the prestigious scholarly periodical Print Quarterly.