Cornell Library receives a Mellon Foundation grant for online math archive

Cornell University Library is the recipient of a $750,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a three-year project to create an online repository for mathematics and statistics publications. Titled "Project Euclid," its primary mission is to support the transition of independent mathematics and statistics journals to the online environment.

In Project Euclid, Cornell Library is collaborating with Duke University Press to set up an online repository -- a virtual "one-stop" web site where researchers and scholars will be able to access dozens of important titles in mathematics and statistics. The Euclid site represents a new model of scholarly communication, as it will support the entire span of scholarly publishing from preprints to the distribution of published journals. Project Euclid also will provide journal editors with a unique set of web-based publishing tools that will enable them to streamline their editorial and peer review processes and publish in a more timely and cost-effective manner.

Among its many digitization projects, Cornell Library has identified electronic projects in support of mathematics as a top priority. Nearly 10 years ago, 571 seminal mathematics works in the public domain from its collection were digitized in a pioneering imaging project. Scholars and researchers around the world have used the information on the Math Books Collection web site http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cdl-math-browse.html and have ordered printed and bound copies of these books.

Recently the "Scout Report for Science & Engineering," the premier biweekly selection of useful Internet sites for researchers, educators and students in the life sciences, physical sciences and engineering, selected this site as one of exemplary interest.

At Cornell, Project Euclid is managed by Zsuzsa Koltay, the library's coordinator of electronic publishing. For more information about Project Euclid, visit the web site http://euclid.library.cornell.edu/project/.