Library offers grants to faculty for creating digital collections

Are there items in Cornell's library collections you'd like to see digitized? Could students and faculty at other institutions benefit from access to your teaching materials? Do you want to share your research in a format that can be searched and accessed over the Internet? Cornell University Library (CUL) is offering a total of $200,000 in grants to faculty members for projects that will transform unique teaching and research materials into digital collections that will be searchable and accessible over the Web.

Last year the library launched its Faculty Grants for Digital Library Collections program with the twofold goal of supporting teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences and adding to the library's digital holdings. In May 2004 CUL awarded 13 grants totaling $250,000 to 21 faculty members from the Colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Architecture, Art and Planning, Arts and Sciences, Human Ecology and Law. Staff in the library's Digital Consulting and Production Services (DCAPS) unit are guiding the projects and providing the technological services required to create these new digital collections.

Funding to support the faculty grants program has been provided by alumnus and CUL advisory council member Arthur Penn '56. The emphasis of the program is on building a library of resources that will support a range of scholarly activities at Cornell (and in some cases, at other institutions), rather than creating teaching applications or custom-designed Web sites for a specific course. The digital collections created through this grants program will become a part of Cornell's digital library and made available to students and researchers around the world.

CUL plans to award $200,000 for new projects this spring; individual awards will range from $20,000 to $40,000 and will be made in the form of digitization services and systems provided by the library. Interested faculty should contact DCAPS by March 11 to schedule a meeting to review their project ideas. Full proposals are due by April 8 and awards will be announced in early May. For more information visit http://facultygrants.library.cornell.edu, e-mail dcaps@cornell.edu or call 255-1830.