First Winners of the Stanford Prize for Innovation in Research Libraries Announced

From Stanford News:

The first winners of the Stanford Prize for Innovation in Research Libraries are the Bibliothèque nationale de France (National Library of France) and the Miguel de Cervantes Digital Library in Spain.

Commendations of merit went to Australia’s Griffith University and the New York Public Library.

The Stanford Libraries’ new annual award celebrates groundbreaking programs, projects and services for research libraries anywhere in the world.

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The award to the French national library recognizes both its Gallica and Data Digital Libraries. The Gallica Library promotes French cultural heritage in a digital form, addressing the needs of contemporary scholars as well as a much wider public in a rapidly evolving and highly competitive environment.

The discovery service of the National Library has integrated numerous sources using a Semantic Web approach, thereby making the vast holdings of the library, including those of Gallica, visible through a single, high-tech lens. Together, both efforts drive a wider audience to the digital library from search engines.

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Spain’s Miguel de Cervantes Digital Library, begun in 1999, disseminates Hispanic culture on the web. Based at the University of Alicante in Spain, the library publishes high-quality content, such as its own full-text critical editions, which can be used by the global research community. The library meets the new challenges of digital libraries with a more open, user-oriented design guided by service-oriented architecture and relying on open-source development.

Australia’s Griffith University was commended for its non-traditional Research Hub, which addresses the need for a single, comprehensive view of a university’s research output. It serves an ambitiously wide audience, including international researchers looking for datasets, research students looking for supervisors, industry members looking for consultants and their expertise, and journalists looking for expert sources.

The new award commends New York Public Library Labs for its role as an internal start-up, with an impressively wide range of projects that apply digital technology to collections, services and the institution’s mission in imaginative and effective ways.

Read the Complete Report (Includes List of Judges)

See Also: National Library of France (BnF) Launches iPad App, More Than 2 Million Digitized Items Available (October 30, 2012)

See Also: “National Library of France Revamps Online Search” (March 17, 2011)