The University of Tennessee Digital Library Center was created as an internal Center of Excellence in 2001 to foster the creation and use of digitized collections and provide open access to materials of interest to the academic community. A five-year institutional grant provided start-up funding for the human and technical resources necessary to select, format, and provide access to digital materials. It is affiliated with the national Digital Library Foundation. It is also affiliated with Tenn-Share in hosting Volunteer Voices, a statewide initiative that gathers and digitizes materials of cultural and historical relevance to the state and its citizens.