Slides for the DLF and NDSA conferences in Milwaukee with an update on opportunities for funding digital library projects at IMLS

1. Update on IMLS
National Digital Platform
November 2016

2. About IMLS
Institute of Museum and Library Services
Who are we?
IMLS is the primary source of federal support
for the nation’s libraries and museums.
What do we do?
We make grants, convene groups, conduct
research, and publish in order to build the
capacity of museums and libraries to serve
the public.

3. Fiscal Year 2016 Appropriations
Enacted FY2016 budget
$230,000,000
LIBRARY GRANTS TO STATES
ADMINISTRATION
MUSEUM DISCRETIONARY
GRANTS
LIBRARY DISCRETIONARY
GRANTS

4. Museum and Library Grants:
Who is eligible to apply?
Generally, a non-profit museum or
library located in the United States, its
territories, or a freely associated state
Check specific program guidelines on the
IMLS website for more details. Additional
types of organizations are eligible for some
programs.
• aquariums
• arboretums
• art museums
• botanical gardens
• children’s/youth museums
• historic houses/sites
• history museums
• natural history/anthropology
museums
• nature centers
• planetariums
• science/technology centers
• specialized museums
• zoological parks
“Museums” include:

5. Museum and Library Grants:
Who is ineligible to apply?
• A for-profit organization
• An individual
• A federally funded institution
• A foreign country or
organization
Please note:
If you are a non-eligible
institution, we encourage you to
apply through a partnership with
an eligible institution.

6. National Digital Platform
the national digital platform is
the combination of software,
social and technical
infrastructure & staff
expertise that provide library
content and services to all
users in the United States.

7. National Digital Platform
The platform isn’t an
individual thing. It isn’t a
piece of software, or a
website. The platform is
what all those things add
up to.

8. National Digital Platform
It is possible for every
library in the country to
leverage and benefit from
the work of other libraries
in shared digital services,
systems and
infrastructure.

9. National Digital Platform
foundations of the
national digital platform
already exist

10. National Digital Platform
prioritize improving &
connecting promising
digital tools & services
that have clear potential
to scale

11. National Digital Platform
 In 2015 and 2016 IMLS
convened stakeholders to
provide input on the
national digital platform
portfolio
 The results of the 2015
convening are available
distilled in this report
http://1.usa.gov/1Xkxrcw

12. National Digital Platform
Key Themes from the 2015 event included
 Engaging, Mobilizing and Connecting
Communities
 Leveraging linked open data to connect
content across institutions and amplify
impact
 Shifting to continuous professional learning
as part of library professional practice

13. National Digital Platform
Engaging, Mobilizing and Connecting Communities
 Engaging users in national digital platform
projects through crowdsourcing and other
approaches
 Establishing radical and systematic
collaborations across sectors of the library,
archives, and museum communities, as well as
with other allied institutions
 Championing diversity and inclusion by ensuring
that the national digital platform serves and
represents a wide range of communities
 Establishing and Refining Tools & Infrastructure

14. National Digital Platform
Leveraging linked open data to connect content
across institutions and amplify impact
 Focusing on documentation and system
interoperability across digital library software
projects
 Researching and developing tools and services
that leverage computational methods to
increase accessibility and scale practice across
individual projects

15. National Digital Platform
Shifting to continuous professional learning as
part of library professional practice
 Focusing on hands-on training to develop
computational literacy in formal library
education programs
 Educating librarians and archivists to meet the
emerging digital needs of libraries and
archives, including cross-training in technical
and other skills

16. Library Grant Programs
Libraries & Museums Advance the Digital Humanities
Program Goals
Through this partnership, IMLS and NEH
will jointly fund Digital Humanities
Advancement Grant projects that
involve collaborations with museums
and/or libraries in support of the
National Digital Platform effort.
Level I (from $5,000 to $40,000)
Level II (from $40,001 to $75,000)
Deadlines January 11th, 2017
Amount
Level I (from $5,000 to $40,000)
Level II (from $40,001 to $75,000)
Cost Share

17. Library Grant Programs
Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program
Program Goals
The Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian
Program (LB21) supports professional
development, graduate education, and
continuing education to help libraries
and archives develop a diverse
workforce of librarians to better meet
the changing learning and information
needs of the American public.
Deadlines February 1st 2017
Amount $50,000-$1,000,000
Cost Share
Cost share requirements vary with
project type

18. National Digital Platform
Almost all the narratives for these
projects are available online
imls.gov/grants/awarded/LG-70-15-0006-15
Just put the log # in the last part

19. Tools for Born Digital Content
Email: Process, Appraise, Discover, Deliver – ePADD
Phase 2 $685,129.00 and $685,129.00 in cost share
– Stanford University Libraries, with partners University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Harvard University,
University of California, Irvine, and Metropolitan New
York Library Council, will significantly improve ePADD, an
open-source software package that supports archival
processes around the appraisal, ingest, processing,
discovery, and delivery of email archives. This phase of
development will greatly expand the program's
scalability, usability, and feature set.
– https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/LG-70-15-0242-
15

20. Tools for Born Digital Content
A Re-enactment Tool for Collections of Digital Artifacts
$109,494 and $169,970 in cost share
– Rhizome, an international born-digital art organization, in
partnership with Yale University and the University of
Freiburg, will enhance a set of software tools connecting
archives of digital artifacts and emulation frameworks. The
project will greatly increase the viability of emulation as a
preservation strategy by making environments of legacy
software manageable for collection managers. This proposed
project responds to the disparity between the proven
viability of emulation as a digital preservation strategy and
the practical needs of collection managers.
– https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/LG-70-16-0079-16

21. Scaling up Shared Services
Periods, Organized (PeriodO) 2: Linking, Discovering,
and Reconciling Information about the Past $247,771
and $10,027 in cost share
– The University of Texas at Austin will significantly
expand the usefulness of the PeriodO platform and
dataset beyond archaeology to meet the needs of a
broader audience of librarians, data managers, scholars,
and students across the academic spectrum. The project
will complete a set of visualization tools for searching
and filtering in the graphic user interface and provide
workshops to explore the role PeriodO might play in the
management and discoverability of their data.
– https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/LG-70-16-0009-
16

22. Access for All and Inclusion
Creating digital library (DL) design guidelines on accessibility,
usability and utility for blind and visually impaired (BVI) users
$495,600 and $214,664 in cost share
– The University of Wisconsin and partners will collaborate to
develop digital library design guidelines on accessibility,
usability, and utility for blind and visually impaired (BVI)
users. The project is motivated by the belief that
approximately 20.6 million Americans with significant vision
loss cannot use digital libraries effectively due to their sight-
centered design. Accessibility guidelines exist but fail to
address help-seeking situations of blind and visually impaired
(BVI) users in their interactions with digital libraries.
– https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/LG-70-16-0038-16

23. Access for All and Inclusion
Diversifying the Digital Historical Record: Integrating
Community Archives in National Strategies for Access to
Digital Cultural Heritage $100,000
– The Amistad Research Center, in collaboration with the
Shorefront Legacy Center, the South Asian American Digital
Archive, Mukurtu, and the Inland Empire Memories Project of
the University of California-Riverside, will use a National
Forum grant to host a series of meetings that will focus on
integrating community archives in the National Digital
Platform. Outcomes of the project will include a summary
white paper providing recommendations for increased
representation of marginalized communities and people in
our digital cultural heritage.
– https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/LG-71-16-0037-16

24. Library Grant Programs
National Leadership Grants for Libraries
Program Goals
To support projects that address
challenges faced by the library and
archive fields, and have the potential
to advance theory or practice in those
fields.
Deadlines
September 1, 2016
February 1st 2017
Amount $10,000-$2,000,000
Cost Share
Cost share requirements vary with
project type

25. Digital Education and Training
Art Information Professionals: A National Digital Stewardship
Residency Program $421,750
 The Philadelphia Museum of Art will partner with the Art
Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) to adapt the
existing National Digital Stewardship residency (NDSR)
program to create a curriculum focused on art information
management. The project will support eight residents over
two years. Residents will complete projects at art and
cultural heritage libraries across the country, increasing
the functionality and accessibility of their host institutions'
digital content and services.
 https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/RE-40-16-0105-16

26. Digital Education and Training
Foundations to Actions: Extending Innovations in Digital
Libraries in Partnership with NDSR Learners $370,756 and
$129,739 in cost share
– The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), led by the Ernst Mayr
Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard
University (MCZ), will host a National Digital Stewardship
Residency (NDSR) cohort. The NDSR cohort will include five
residents from across the country, all graduates of LIS or
related master's programs, in a collaborative project to
improve tools, curation, and content stewardship at BHL. Each
host institution will provide mentorship to a resident for a
specific project designed to improve the functionality of BHL
and will identify how tools and processes may be transferred
to or from other digital library and museum environments.
– https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/RE-40-16-0082-16

27. Resources from IMLS
www.imls.gov
 Program Notices of
Funding
Opportunities
(NOFO)
 Eligibility criteria
 Application process
 Sample applications
 Awarded grants
 Peer-reviewer
resources

28. How to Contact Us
Trevor Owens
Office of Library Services
tjowens@imls.gov
@tjowens

29. Thank you and good luck!