IMLS Shares Full Text of First Four National Digital Platform Funding Proposals

From an IMLS “Up Next” Blog by Trevor Owens:

We recently announced the first series of awards addressing the national digital platform priority in the National Leadership Grants for Libraries program. This is both a strategic priority for the agency and part of a new proposal process.

• Fostering a New National Library Network through a Community-­Based, Connected Repository System (LG-70-15-0006)
  The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Stanford University, and DuraSpace will foster a greatly expanded network of open-access, content-hosting “hubs” that will enable discovery and interoperability, as well as the reuse of digital resources by people from this country and around the world. The three partners will engage in a major development of the community-driven open source Hydra project to provide these hubs with a new all-in-one solution, which will also allow countless other institutions to easily join the national digital platform.
  
  [From the Funding Request: “Given its considerable ambition and broad impact, this is a substantial project and we anticipate it will require $2 million in funding from IMLS, which we expect to match with an equal amount in cost share.”]

• Museum Hub for Open Content (LG-70-15-0002)
  ARTstor, in collaboration with the El Paso Museum of Art, the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Staten Island Museum, and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) will create and implement software to enable museums to contribute digital image collections for open public access. The project will lower barriers to museum contributions to the DPLA by producing enhanced metadata tools, intellectual property rights decision support tools, and a direct-to-DPLA publishing capacity.
  
  [From the Funding Request: “Amount Requested: $750,000]

• Combining Social Media Storytelling with Web Archives (LG-71-15-0077)
  Old Dominion University and the Internet Archive will collaborate to develop tools and techniques for integrating “storytelling” social media and web archiving. The partners will use information retrieval techniques to (semi-) automatically generate stories summarizing a collection and mine existing public stories as a basis for librarians, archivists, and curators to create collections about breaking events.
  
  [From the Funding Request: “For this three year project the total budget for IMLS will be approximately $470,000. Although not required for research projects, ODU will cost share an additional total of approximately $107,000.”]

• Repository Services for Accessible Course Content (LG-72-15-0009)
  This planning project, led by Tufts University, will bring together experts from disability services, including librarians, IT professionals, advocates, and legal counsel, to develop work plans for shared infrastructure, within which universities can support their students with disabilities. The intention is to create specifications and a business model that will complement existing platforms and services.
  
  [From the Funding Request: “The process would run May 2015-April 2016, for $50,000.”]

Background About National Digital Platform

• Funding Notice: National Leadership Grants For Libraries

• Materials From IMLS Focus Meetings 2014 ||| 2015
  Note: The focus on the April 29, 2014 and April 28, 2015 meetings is or will be the National Digital Platform

• IMLS Convening Focuses on the National Digital Platform (May 30, 2014)

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Awards, Funding, Libraries, Management and Leadership, National Libraries, Open Access, Public Libraries, Publishing, Resources