IMLS Grants To Support ROI Study, New Open-Source Library System, Digitization, More
RSS$17.9 million in National Leadership Grants awarded
-- Library Journal, 09/25/2009
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- Projects at universities, libraries, museums
- Funding for digital advances, research, collaborations
- Demonstrations and planning grants
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has announced National Leadership Grants (NLG) totaling $17.9 million for libraries, universities, library schools, museums, and other educational institutions.
Among them are projects to assess return on investment (ROI) in academic libraries; explore online patron instruction in public libraries; develop an open-source ILS for public libraries; delve into energy-saving opportunities in research libraries; extend depository libraries' collection development practices; collect television news; explore early literacy; digitize works from the Middle East; create a statewide institutional repository; and much more.
The next deadline for the National Leadership Grants program is February 1, 2010. Click here for more information.
Below LJ boils down the summaries connected to libraries, by category.
Advancing digital resources
The University of California, Santa Cruz, CA was awarded $615,175 (match: $795,549) for "Creating a Virtual Terrapin Station: Blending Traditional & Socially Constructed Archives for Research, Teaching."
The university library will digitize materials from its Grateful Dead Archive and make them available in a unique and cutting-edge web site, the Virtual Terrapin Station.
The Gelman Library System, George Washington University, Washington, DC, was awarded $399,290 (match: $1,271,006) for "Cultural Imaginings: the creation of the Arab World in the Western Mind."
The libraries of George Washington University and Georgetown University will digitize their jointly held collections of Western literature on the Middle East and works by Middle East and North African authors comprising more than 2500 volumes. The project team will test and evaluate the performance of a Kirtas 2400 book scanner and assess its capacity to produce high-quality/high-volume digital scans of bound volumes.
The Georgia Institute of Technology Library and Information Center, Atlanta, was awarded $857,005 (match: $897,244) for "The GALILEO Knowledge Repository: Advancing the Access and Management of Scholarly Digital Content."
Georgia Tech, in partnership with the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, the Medical College of Georgia, Georgia Southern University, Valdosta State University, Albany State University, North Georgia College and State University, and the College of Coastal Georgia, will build a statewide institutional repository.
The WGBH Educational Foundation, Boston, was awarded $487,681 (match: $487,686) for "The Boston TV News Digital Library: 1960-2000."
The WGBH Media Library and Archives, in collaboration with Northeast Historic Film, Cambridge Community Television, and the Boston Public Library, will develop the Boston TV News Digital Library: 1960–2000, the first online resource offering a city’s commercial, noncommercial, and community cable TV news heritage to educators and the public.
The Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Murray Research Archive, Harvard College was awarded $823,016 (match: $825,380) for "A Policy Based Archival Replication System for Libraries, Archives, and Museums using a Virtual Private LOCKSS."
Working with the Odum Institute for Research (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), the Roper Center for Public Opinion (University of Connecticut), and the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (University of Michigan), Harvard will develop and distribute a production-ready open source tool for verified distributed replication of digital collection data, based on an existing prototype. The tool will allow any library, museum, or archive to audit replication of its content across an existing LOCKSS network and will allow groups of collaborating institutions to automatically and verifiably replicate each others’ content.
Washington University Libraries, St. Louis, was awarded $376,426 (match: $386,396) for "The St. Louis Freedom Suits Legal Encoding Project."
The Washington University Libraries, in partnership with the Missouri History Museum and other contributors within and outside Washington University, will digitize, transcribe, and encode the St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project and supplementary materials. The cases, especially the suits enslaved persons brought against their tacit “owners,” are important historical documents.
Demonstrations
Association of Southeastern Research Libraries, Atlanta, was awarded $328,329 (match: $333,313) for "ASERL Collaborative Federal Depository Project."
ASERL, in partnership with the University of Kentucky and the University of South Carolina, will create collaborative centers of excellence among federally designated regional depository libraries to improve access to federal government publications and create a model for improving depository library services and operations.
University of Guam, Mangilao, was awarded $401,118 (match: $401,118) for "Information Literacy for Future Island Leaders."
The University of Guam library will create a comprehensive system of graduate student support through new bibliographic instruction classes, research services, and digital resources.
King County Library System, Issaquah, WA, was awarded $998,556 (match: $1,014,400) for "Empowered by Open Source."
In creating a new open source library system, King County Library System (KCLS), will partner with Peninsula Library System (San Mateo, CA), Orange County Library System (Orlando, FL), and Ann Arbor (MI) District Library to create and develop the critical infrastructure components that have traditionally been provided by ILS vendors and will establish a peer-to-peer support model for open source libraries.
Research
The University of Hawaii, Department of Information and Computer Sciences, Honolulu, was awarded $249,918 (match: $86,193) for "Pathways to Excellence and Achievement in Research and Learning (PEARL)."
Faculty and librarians at the University of Hawaii will create a team-based model of professional development for high school librarians and teachers collaborating to address the “expectation gaps” between the standards students must meet to earn a high school diploma and the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in their post-high school pursuits.
The Image Permanence Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, was awarded $580,174 (match: $291,019) for "Research on Energy Saving Opportunities in Libraries."
This project will investigate a promising method for libraries to achieve significant reductions in energy use without compromising the preservation quality of collection environments through a carefully monitored and risk-managed shutdown of air handling units during unoccupied hours. Five partner libraries will participate in the experiment.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Information and Library Science, Chapel Hill, was awarded $492,463 (match: $83,512) for "Policy-Driven Repository Interoperability (PoDRI)."
UNC and the DuraSpace organization (formerly DSpace and the Fedora Commons) are partnering to investigate the feasibility of interoperability mechanisms between repositories at the policy level.
University of Tennessee, Center or Information Studies, Knoxville, was awarded $1,000,000 (match: $219,702) for "Value, Outcomes, and Return on Investment of Academic Libraries.”
Lib-Value, led by Professor (and LJ columnist) Carol Tenopir addresses academic librarians’ growing need to demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) and value of the library to the institution and will help guide library management in the redirection of library funds to important products and services for the future.
University of North Texas Libraries, Denton, was awarded $631,720 (match: $317,001) for "Classification of Government Websites in the End-of-Term Archive: Extending Depository Libraries' Collection Development Practices."
The University of North Texas is partnering with the Internet Archive to pursue the goals named in the project.
Planning grants
The Council on Library and Information Resources, Washington, DC, was awarded $96,879 (match: $45,142) for "Collaborative Planning (Co-Plan) to Support an Infrastructure for Humanities Scholarship."
CLIR, in partnership with Tufts University, will lead a collaborative planning process engaging scholars and academic librarians to examine the services and digital objects classicists have developed, their future research needs, and the roles of libraries and other curatorial institutions in fostering the infrastructure on which the core intellectual activities of classics and many other disciplines depend.
Wheaton College, Norton, MA, was awarded $86,770 (match: $53,678) for "Publishing TEI Documents for Small Liberal Arts Colleges: Planning a Service, Building a Community."
The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) has become the main vehicle for transcribing and encoding primary source and archival texts. The long-term goal of this planning project is to identify and develop an implementation plan to allow scholars and archivists from a wide array of liberal arts schools to store and display their TEI-enhanced digitized texts.
Online Computer Library Center/WebJunction, Dublin, OH, was awarded $80,537 (match: $34,720) for "Online Patron Instruction in Public Libraries."
WebJunction is partnering with the San Francisco Public Library. This project will conduct preliminary research on the state of the library industry for patron instruction; assess needs of both patrons and library staff; pilot a small set of patron-facing online programming in San Francisco Public Libraries;
Pennsylvania State University, University Libraries, University Park, was awarded $82,702 (match: $42,395) for "The Pennsylvania Home Front in the Civil War."
The Penn State University Libraries and the Penn State George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center, in partnership with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the State Library of Pennsylvania, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, will lay the groundwork for a multiyear library-archive-scholar collaboration to digitize primary source materials held in Pennsylvania archives and special collections.
University of Washington, Seattle, WA was awarded $92,744 (match: $57,482) for "Project VIEWS: Valuable Initiatives in Early Learning that Work Successfully."
Project VIEWS aims to extend the local model of successful early learning services and partnerships in Washington State’s public libraries into a national model. The University of Washington Information School is collaborating with the Florida State University College of Information; the Washington Early Learning Public Library Partnership of 21 urban, suburban, and rural library systems; and the Washington Foundation for Early Learning.
Library, museum collaborations
Michigan State University, MATRIX, Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online, was awarded $319,284 (match: $333,063) for "Oral History in the Digital Age."
Michigan State University, through the MATRIX Center and the Michigan State University Museum, will partner with the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center, the American Folklore Society, and the Oral History Association to recommend standards and best practices for digital oral history.
Queens Museum of Art, NY, was awarded $433,596 (match: $433,596) for "Inviting Institutions: A Collaborative Approach to Family Programming for Audiences with Special Needs."
The Queens Museum, in partnership with the Queens Library and Quality Services for the Autistic Community, will develop and implement a model community-based art therapy program for Spanish- speaking families of children with autism spectrum disorders.
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