September 2006 National Leadership Grant Announcement - By Category

Advancing Learning Communities   |   Building Digital Resources   |   Research and Demonstration

View Grants by State

Advancing Learning Communities

Denver Public Library - Denver, CO
Award Amount: $960,595
Match Amount: $1,227,230
Grant Category: Advancing Learning Communities

Contact: Ms. Pilar Castro-Reino
Cluster Manager
(303)880-2105; pcastro@denver.lib.co.us

Project Title: "Tu Biblioteca Hoy / Your Library Today"
Denver Public Library’s Tu Biblioteca Hoy / Your Library Today will serve Denver's growing population of Spanish speakers with few or no English language skills. In partnership with Museo de las Americas and the Denver Art Museum, the public library’s adult programs will center on English language acquisition, GED support, life skills, and computer skills. Children's programs, offered at the same times and locations as adult programs, will promote literacy, art and culture. In addition, Denver Public Library will train its own staff in Spanish language and culture to serve the wider audiences. Tu Biblioteca Hoy programs will be offered at seven of the Denver Public Library's 22 branch libraries.

David Lloyd Kreeger Foundation - Washington, DC
Award Amount: $232,836
Match Amount: $155,508
Grant Category: Advancing Learning Communities

Contact: Ms. Judy Greenberg
Director
(202)337-3050; jag@kreegermuseum.org

Project Title: "Hear Art, See Music: Promoting Universal Access for Learning through the Arts"
The Kreeger Museum in partnership with the Catholic University of America (CUA) will develop a model program for using art and music for students with special educational needs. The program includes the development of specially designed art museum tours and workshops with docents who are trained by visual artists and CUA faculty in special education and music education. The tour will be followed by a workshop taught by a professional artist. The students will listen to contemporary and classical music, dissect the sounds, and interpret them in drawing exercises and compositional development. The Hear Art, See Music workshops will include the dissemination of CD-ROMs and DVDs to museum educators as tools to design museum programs for children with special education needs. This program is designed to be replicated by small and mid-size museums.

Orange County Library System - Orlando, FL
Award Amount: $185,439
Match Amount: $185,439
Grant Category: Advancing Learning Communities

Contact: Ms. Jo Ann Sampson
Assistant Manager
(407)835-7478; sampson.joann@ocls.info

Project Title: "The OCLS as an Economic Development Partner"
The Orange County Library System in central Florida will expand its role as a partner in the community’s economic development by adding to its technology training program. It will provide a mobile van, offer training courses in Haitian Creole, and provide an online self-paced tutorial in business skills. This program is designed to be replicated by small and mid-size museums.

Frazier Historical Arms Museum - Louisville, KY
Award Amount: $33,107
Match Amount: $14,600
Grant Category: Advancing Learning Communities

Contact: Mr. B.J. Davis
Head of Education
(502)753-1032; bjdavis@frazierarmsmuseum.org

Project Title: "From a Distance: Exploring History at the Frazier Museum"
The Frazier Arms Museum will use videoconferencing capability to expand its education resources and provide the local community access to museum activities they would not normally encounter. A collaboration with the British Royal Armouries, this project will serve as a model, demonstrating how, using partnerships and the adaptation of some common technologies, museums can play a vital role in engaging local teachers and students in new learning opportunities.

Philadelphia Museum of Art - Philadelphia, PA
Award Amount: $246,550
Match Amount: $164,976
Grant Category: Advancing Learning Communities

Contact: Ms. Marla Shoemaker
Senior Curator of Education
(215)684-7586; mshoemaker@philamuseum.org

Project Title: "Arts, Museum, Literacy"
The Philadelphia Museum of Art, in collaboration with the School District of Philadelphia, will develop a curriculum that will link art and literacy concepts for all fourth-grade students and teachers in the school district. A project team of museum educators, guided by a School District advisory committee will create a curriculum that features artwork from all of the project’s partner art institutions: the Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Fabric Workshop and Museum. The project supports art education and the collaboration of schools with museums to improve literacy and increase museum visits. It provides a model of how multiple museums can provide a common curriculum that will enhance the use of resources and reach broader audiences.

Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico - San Juan, PR
Award Amount: $279,963
Match Amount: $322,000
Grant Category: Advancing Learning Communities

Contact: Dr. Doreen Colon Camacho
Directora, Dept de Education
(787)977-6277x2225; dcolon@mapr.ord

Project Title: "ALIANZA: Puerto Rico Art Museum and Operacion Exito"
The Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico will partner with Operacion Exito (OE) to create an Art-Science-Technology Project that will bring to the museum top high school students from low income areas, providing previously unavailable education opportunities. The project will develop an enhanced computer lab at the museum through OE, an innovative education initiative in science and math supported by the Puerto Rico Department of Education. Through the enhanced curriculum, students from the Central Visual Arts School will use new learning tools that integrate art and science using new technologies. A key component is the integration of multiple resources at the museum, including use of museum collections, space to engage with other students, and interaction with artists. There will also be teacher workshops to further integrate the museum resources into the curriculum.

St. Croix Library Association - St. Croix, VI
Award Amount: $152,180
Match Amount: $69,419
Grant Category: Advancing Learning Communities

Contact: Mrs. Judith Rogers
President, St. Croix Library Association
(340)692-4132; jrogers@uvi.edu

Project Title: "Promoting literacy through the arts: solutions for the United States Virgin Islands"
The St. Croix Library Association and the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts will create a twenty-four week after-school and six-week summer program for children ages 9-19 in Frederiksted, St. Croix. Students will learn occupational skills with transferable literacy and information literacy skills, learned within the context of their own cultural heritage. Senior citizens who are talented craftsmen and community culture bearers will assist the students in their skills acquisition, and these activities will help bridge the intergenerational gap between seniors and students. Five island schools will participate by identifying participating students.

Fairfax County Public Schools - Fairfax, VA
Award Amount: $249,880
Match Amount: $106,929
Grant Category: Advancing Learning Communities

Contact: Ms. Lory Monaco-Stevenson
Library Media Specialist
(703)781-2764; Lory.Monacostevenson@fcps.edu

Project Title: "Project ExCELLS (An Excellence Coalition for Education, Literacy, and Library Services"
The Fort Belvoir Elementary School Library, the Kingstowne Public Library , and the Van Noy Army Base Library will combine their expertise and resources to serve the transient military population of Fort Belvoir Army Base. They will expand offerings while providing learning networks and services for students in kindergarten through fifth grade and their parents. Services will include literacy instruction, author visits, educational tours, homework help, and guidance in county services. Project evaluation results will provide important information about learning problems and successes in transient populations. These results will serve as a model for other military base schools.

University of Wisconsin's Madison Arboretum - Madison, WI
Award Amount: $591,843
Match Amount: $592,364
Grant Category: Advancing Learning Communities

Contact: Dr. Elizabeth McCann
Outreach Manager
(608)262-5367; epmccann@wisc.edu

Project Title: "Restoration Education, Science Training and Outreach to Regional Educators (RESTORE)"
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum will replicate and expand on a model K-12 teacher professional development program that focuses on enhancing teaching and student learning through the process of restoring native ecosystems on school grounds. The RESTORE (Restoration-Education, Science Training and Outreach to Regional Educators) project builds on the nationally recognized model called Earth Partnership for Schools (EPS) and makes it available to a larger audience. EPS emphasizes inquiry-based learning that incorporates education reform into science, math, social studies, language arts, and other subjects. Project activities include development training courses, videoconferences, and Web-based communication. The restoration of living environments will result in life long learning skills such as collaboration, decision-making and scientific knowledge. Partners in this project include Center for Earth and Environmental Science, Indiana University Purdue University; Dyck Arboretum of the Plains; Minnesota Landscape Arboretum; Standing Cedars Land Trust/Philadelphia Community Farm; University of Wisconsin-Stout; and the Urban Ecology Center.

Building Digital Resources

Alabama Commission on Higher Education - Montgomery, AL
Award Amount: $113,427
Match Amount: $376,576
Grant Category: Building Digital Resources

Contact: Mr. Aaron Trehub
Director of Library Technology
(334)844-1716; trehuaj@auburn.edu

Project Title: "Alabama Digital Preservation Network"
The Network of Alabama Academic Libraries will test the feasibility of adopting the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) preservation approach to locally created digital assets in a state-based, low-cost archival preservation network. Currently used for journals, LOCKSS creates a network of duplicates that can replace quickly any lost or damaged digital object. This project will create the Alabama Digital Preservation Network for digital repositories of all types, demonstrating a preservation solution for academic institutions, state agencies, and community cultural heritage organizations that are building digital collections for public access.

University of California - Berkeley, CA
Award Amount: $301,797
Match Amount: $393,002
Grant Category: Building Digital Resources

Contact: Ms. Lucinda Barnes
Associate Director for Art, Film, and Programs
(510)642-7539; lbarnes@berkeley.edu

Project Title: "Expanding Classroom Access to Online Film-Related Resources"
The Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives of the University of California at Berkeley will digitize and make available on the Web15,000 items from CineFiles, a document image database of Pacific Film Archives’ holdings related to world cinema. These items will include reviews, articles, publicity materials, film festival programs, and manuscripts relevant to humanities and social science education. The project will also create tutorials and workshops for teachers who want to use film and related materials in their high school or college classrooms but have no formal training in film history.

University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) - Irvine, CA
Award Amount: $249,999
Match Amount: $140,643
Grant Category: Building Digital Resources

Contact: Mr. David Goldberg
Director
(949)824-8176; goldberg@uci.edu

Project Title: "A Testbed for the Redlining Archives of California's Exclusionary Spaces (T-Races)"
The University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), in collaboration with the San Diego Supercomputer Center, will preserve, analyze, and make publicly accessible online documents relating to the practice of “redlining” neighborhoods in the 1930s and 1940s in eight California cities. (“Redlining” refers to the practice of flagging minority neighborhoods as undesirable for home loans.) UCHRI’s Humanities, Arts, and Social-Sciences grid will allow a central catalog to manage the preservation metadata for each city’s electronic file of neighborhoods. This important historical data will be accessible from any personal computer. The project will have the added benefit of demonstrating the use of grid-based repositories for humanities-related data.

Northwestern University Library - Evanston, IL
Award Amount: $189,719
Match Amount: $187,826
Grant Category: Building Digital Resources

Contact: Mr. David Easterbrook
George & Mary LeCron Foster, Curator
(847)491-4549; dleaster@northwestern.edu

Project Title: "From the Zanzibar Slave Market to Election Campaigning in Pre-Independent Kenya: Digital Access to 100 Years of East African Life and Culture"
The Northwestern University Library will digitize, describe, and make accessible on the Web the entire Winterton Collection, which documents African life and culture from the 1860s through the 1960s. The material, which was assembled by collector Humphrey Winterton and includes more than 7,500 glass lantern slides, photographs, postcards, and diary pages, provides a visual chronicle of the building of East Africa’s railways, the growth of its urban centers, rural life, and the travels and work of European colonial officials and businessmen. The photographs show the changing relationships among Africans and between Africans and Europeans. The project will support teaching about Africa, test emerging digital preservation standards, and ensure that both the physical and digital collections are preserved. Teachers will create curricula on African studies for youth at both the secondary and undergraduate levels.

University of Maryland at College Park, College of Information Studies - College Park, MD
Award Amount: $226,275
Match Amount: $93,407
Grant Category: Building Digital Resources

Contact: Dr. Ann Weeks
Professor of the Practice
(301)405-2060; acweeks@umd.edu

Project Title: "Digitizing Collections of Historical Children's Books"
The University of Maryland's International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) research team will create digital collections of historic children's books for research and general use. These special collections will be accessible through the ICDL at www.icdlbooks.org as well as from the Web sites of children’s literature collections at partner institutions: the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut; the Boston Public Library; and the University of Minnesota. The inclusion of these collections in the current ICDL, searchable across institutions, will make important children’s books available to the public and will facilitate research in children’s literature.

Walker Art Center - Minneapolis, MN
Award Amount: $287,125
Match Amount: $414,500
Grant Category: Building Digital Resources

Contact: Susan Rotilie
Program Manager
(612)375-7614; susan.rotilie@walkerart.org

Project Title: "ArtsConnectEd II"
The Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts will continue their strong partnership in a project to enhance and provide access to their ArtsConnectEd Web site. The first version, created in 1998, has been very successful, but now new technologies and new needs have created an opportunity to enhance the service this Web site already provides. This improvement will permit the site to be a dynamic, open source, site that allows the educators to create and manage the content of the educational material and respond more directly to teacher needs. Teachers have expressed a strong desire for the resources and flexibility to revise the content as their classroom needs change. There will be a project report as well as a project blog. In addition, online seminars will be held for museum professionals to learn how to create or replicate features that are of interest for their own institutions.

University of Missouri-St. Louis - Saint Louis, MO
Award Amount: $732,428
Match Amount: $733,227
Grant Category: Building Digital Resources

Contact: Dr. Louis Gerteis
Project Director
(314)516-5680; gerteis@umsl.edu

Project Title: "Placing Museums in Virtual Context: Building an Immersive Digital Landscape Generator"
The University of Missouri-St. Louis is partnering with three museums in St. Louis--Campbell House, Old North St. Louis Restoration Group Museum, and Museum of Westward Expansion-- to develop and produce a “tool kit” that will enable non-technical users to employ three dimensional imaging technology to create interactive museum exhibits. The technology enables the creation of virtual cities, buildings, street and similar settings. Museums can then use these 3D representations to help the visitor understand the historical context places represented in their collection and exhibits. The museum partners in this project each present a different need that the tool kit must address. The key product of the project will be an easily adaptable mechanism for museum staff to create presentations on a Web site or within an exhibit space as a stand-alone display.

Cornell University's Macaualy Library - Ithaca, NY
Award Amount: $250,000
Match Amount: $167,710
Grant Category: Building Digital Resources

Contact: Dr. John Fitzpatrick
Executive Director
(607)254-2410; jwf7@cornell.edu

Project Title: "Archiving National Public Radio's "Radio Expeditions" at The Macaulay Library"
The Macaulay Library of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology will archive, index, and make Web-accessible more than 2,000 hours of wildlife sounds and scientist interviews recordings originally recorded for National Public Radio's popular “Radio Expeditions" programs. Until now, only one percent of this material has been publicly available as broadcast or archived programs. This rich set of recordings will be freely accessible online to scientists, wildlife management teams, museums and zoos, the media, nature product manufacturers, and the public. It will also be used to incorporate animal behavior and natural history into K-12 educational science curricula. The field interviews will provide insights into the work of zoologists to interest young people considering careers in wildlife science.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library - Chapel Hill, NC
Award Amount: $129,424
Match Amount: $86,798
Grant Category: Building Digital Resources

Contact: Mr. Paul Jones
Clinical Associate Professor/Director, ibiblio.org
(919)962-7600; jones@unc.edu

Project Title: "Folkstreams.net: Digitized Video and Film of Traditional American Folk Cultures"
Expanding on the work of a previous IMLS grant, UNC’s ibiblio.org digital library will archive, digitize, and video stream 35 new documentary films. Partnering with Folkstreams, Inc. and the University’s Southern Folklore Collection, the project will produce a guide to best practices in video digitization; add 20 new video clips to its Video Aids for Film Preservation; and create portals, guides, and outreach materials for senior citizens and teachers. Rare documentaries will provide knowledge of American folklife to these two distinct audiences using the easy-to-access folkstreams.net Website.

Rhodes College - Memphis, TN
Award Amount: $249,504
Match Amount: $495,172
Grant Category: Building Digital Resources

Contact: Dr. Suzanne Bonefas
Director of Special Projects
(901)843-3739; bonefas@rhodes.edu

Project Title: "Crossroads to Freedom"
Rhodes College will digitize and make available on the Web two African American newspapers and 1200 photographs, letters, and other documents relating to the Civil Rights movement in Memphis, Tennessee, and the mid-south. Researchers will conduct oral history interviews of people involved in the movement and will develop an innovative means of searching and browsing the content in an open-source repository. A coalition of community and educational partners will identify sources of content, create curricula, and help evaluate the project.

University Libraries of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University - Blacksburg, VA
Award Amount: $165,364
Match Amount: $110,958
Grant Category: Building Digital Resources

Contact: Mrs. Annette Bailey
Digital Assets Librarian
(540)231-9266; afbailey@vt.edu

Project Title: "Direct Access to Library Resources with LibX"
The Virginia Tech University Libraries will expand LibX, a tool that allows users of academic and public libraries to search library resources directly from the Web, so that it can be more easily accessed through the Internet. LibX has allowed people to find what they need on the Web without having to access internal databases and catalogs. But the tool is not currently compatible with the predominant internet browsers. This project will also create an easy-to-use “wizard” to help librarians set up a customized LibX for their library. As a result, any library, with a minimal investment of time, will be able to integrate its resources into the user’s browser for seamless access.

Research and Demonstration

University of California, Berkeley - Berkeley, CA
Award Amount: $398,451
Match Amount: $506,509
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Dr. Ray Larson
Professor
(510)642-6046; ray@sims.berkeley.edu

Project Title: "Bringing Lives to Light: Biography in Context"
The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley will create improved tools and identify best practices to automatically link biographical information about people to their historic and geographic context in a way that is clearly displayed and easy to use. The project will allow librarians, archivists, editors, and educational publishers to better serve the public.

University of Southern California - Los Angeles, CA
Award Amount: $600,000
Match Amount: $691,356
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Dr. Bruce Zuckerman
Professor of Religion
(310)541-4573; bzuckerman@usc.edu

Project Title: "Developing Advanced Technologies for the Imaging of Cultural Heritage Objects"
The University of Southern California has formed a partnership with Cultural Heritage Imaging to develop technology that is capable of providing a three-dimensional, multi-view representation of cultural objects that will be downloadable and available over the Internet. This project is a modification of Reflection Transformation Imaging, which until now presented views of only one surface of the objects. The project should result in a tool that will simplify the technology for ease of use by almost any museum. It will also produce the complete process history for each digital object, enabling replication by scholars. The target audience includes museums of all sizes, scholars and students of material culture, cultural heritage professionals, and the interested public. This project has the potential to set a new standard of best practice for digital representations of cultural heritage material.

Heritage Preservation - Washington, DC
Award Amount: $245,493
Match Amount: $110,836
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Ms. Jane Long
Director, Heritage Emergency National Task Force
(202)233-0800; jlong@heritagepreservation.org

Project Title: "Program for Risk Evaluation and Planning (PREP)"
Heritage Preservation will use this grant for its new Program for Risk Evaluation and Planning (PREP) to help prepare museums and historical societies for natural and manmade disasters. Museums in Texas, Ohio, and Mississippi have been selected to participate in this pilot program. Teams of two professionals, a conservation expert and an emergency preparedness expert will make visits to 15 selected museums in the pilot states. PREP focuses on identifying risks to help institutions prepare for emergencies. The results will be reflected in the creation of guidelines for first responders and local emergency managers. The project will also investigate current disaster plan resources and track what activities the participating museums were able to accomplish after the site visits.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Champaign, IL
Award Amount: $249,983
Match Amount: $171,338
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Ms. Jennifer Teper
Conservation Librarian
(217)244-5689; jhain@uiuc.edu

Project Title: "Building a Framework for Preservation and Access Decision Making for Audio-Visual Collections"
UIUC’s University Library will develop and test an Audio-Visual Self-Assessment Program for preservation of and access to endangered recorded sound and moving image collections. Partners include the Illinois Heritage Association, the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois, and the following UIUC components: the Spurlock Museum, WILL AM/FM and TV, the Department of Dance, and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. The result will be a flexible framework that can be used by any cultural heritage institution to help preserve its at-risk audio-visual holdings.

Dominican University's Graduate School of Library and Information Science - River Forest, IL
Award Amount: $290,224
Match Amount: $194,106
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Dr. Susan Roman
Dean
(708)524-6986x6845; sroman@dom.edu

Project Title: "Do Public Library Summer Reading Programs Impact Student Achievement?"
The Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University will examine the impact of public library summer reading programs on student achievement among third- and fourth-grade students, as well as the effect of school and public libraries collaborating to support summer reading clubs. The results of this research will provide crucial data for librarians in the 95.2 percent of public libraries that have summer reading programs and school administrators eager to prevent summer learning loss. Partners on this project are the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University, the Colorado State Library, and the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Louisiana State University's Graduate School of Library and Information Science - Baton Rouge, LA
Award Amount: $166,285
Match Amount: $92,880
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Dr. Lisl Zach
Assistant Professor
(225)578-1486; lzach@lsu.edu

Project Title: "Investigating library and information services during community-based disasters"
The School of Library and Information Science of Louisiana State University will use its grant to gather first hand accounts from librarians who have faced disasters such as the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes. The knowledge gained from these interviews will be used to create guidance and training materials for disaster planning and for delivery of information services during

Johns Hopkins University's Sheridan Libraries - Baltimore, MD
Award Amount: $184,512
Match Amount: $57,534
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Mr. Sayeed Choudhury
Associate Director of Library Digital Programs
(410)516-4930; sayeed@jhu.edu

Project Title: "Digital Archiving of Astronomical Data to Support Publication and Long-term Preservation"
Johns Hopkins University will establish a collaboration of publishers, libraries, and the National Virtual Observatory (NVO) to give astronomers long-term, reliable access to useful data. Incorporating the Web services of the NVO into a digital library framework, this project will provide methods for long-term digital archiving of content that can be used in publishing research in astronomy. The system created by Johns Hopkins and its partners--the University of Washington and the University of Edinburgh--, based on the open-source Fedora digital repository system, will serve as a model for the preservation and use of high-volume data in

Northeast Document Conservation Center - Andover, MA
Award Amount: $197,650
Match Amount: $94,050
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Ms. Aimee Primeaux
Field Service Representative
(978)470-1010; aprimeaux@nedcc.org

Project Title: "Lessons Learned: A New Model for Statewide Disaster Planning"
The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) will develop a model for statewide disaster planning and disseminate it to all state libraries and archives. The project will provide a blueprint for preparing in advance for area-wide disasters and building alliances with federal, state, and local emergency management agencies. Partnering with NEDCC are the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, the Massachusetts State Archives, Heritage Preservation, the Southeast Library Network (SOLINET), and the Society of American

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries - Cambridge, MA
Award Amount: $724,415
Match Amount: $239,308
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Ms. MacKenzie Smith
Associate Director for Technology
(617)253-8184; kenzie@mit.edu

Project Title: "Future-Proofing Architectural Computer-Aided Design (FACADE)"
Using designs of architect Frank Gehry as a test bed, MIT will research Computer-Aided Design (CAD) architectural documents and create preservation strategies to stem the loss of this critical cultural material. The researchers will examine the role of digital preservation archives, such as the open-source DSpace digital repository system, to provide solutions to this problem. Results will be shared with other institutions.

Williams College's Center for Creative Community Development - Williamstown, MA
Award Amount: $334,384
Match Amount: $177,404
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Dr. Stephen Sheppard
Professor of Economics
(413)597-3184; Stephen.C.Sheppard@Williams.edu

Project Title: "Museums and Community: Evaluating the Economic and Social Impacts of Museums"
The Center for Creative Community Development at Williams College will do in-depth data analysis of sixteen selected communities to assess local economic and social impact of museums. With a target audience of museum boards and administrators, policy makers at the national, state and local levels, and private foundations and donors, this research project will study how local neighborhoods are economically and socially transformed by museum operations; what impact museums have on employment and income; and how these local impacts are distributed among different groups and locations. Results of the research will be disseminated through a series of workshops and conference presentations, publications, and an on-line Web site. The results will be made widely available as a baseline comparison for other communities to replicate or adapt to improve the development of customized public

Mid-America Arts Alliance - Kansas City, MO
Award Amount: $153,885
Match Amount: $109,387
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Edana McSweeney
Director of Professional Development
(816)421-1388x21; edana@maaa.org

Project Title: "Finding Solutions by Documenting Need: A Museum Training Needs Assessment (KS, MO, OK)"
The Mid-America Arts Alliance, a six-state museum and cultural service organization will conduct a comprehensive training needs assessment of museums in Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. The Alliance will establish partnerships with the state arts council in each of the three states and collaborate informally with the state museum associations. The results will be the first-ever tabulation of training needs and preferences among museums in these three states. Data will be collected using surveys, in-person and telephone interviews, field visits, and case studies. This will provide a model for how other state and regional organizations can partner with local organizations to obtain this vital information about the museum field. An evaluation of the data will also show how results can be applied nationally.

Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York, NY
Award Amount: $503,550
Match Amount: $433,021
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Ms. Susan Chun
General Manager - Collections Information Planning
(212)396-5016; susan.chun@metmuseum.org

Project Title: "Researching Social Tagging and Folksonomy in the Museum"
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will conduct research on the capabilities of social tagging and folksonomies, methods of labeling and categorizing online collections to make objects easier for the public to find.. There are millions of works on the Web, but the general public sometimes has difficulty finding them because the keywords associated with them may be technical or professional terms. This project will evaluate the relationship of user-suggested terms to existing museum documentation, professional-controlled vocabularies, general reference resources, and terms used in searches of on-line museums resources by the public. The results will provide new strategies for subject description and indexing and increase public access to collections using a set of common terms that takes into account the varied perspectives of users. The Met will collaborate with six other museums on this project: Cleveland Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Rubin Museum of Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

University of Rochester's River Campus Libraries - Rochester, NY
Award Amount: $323,804
Match Amount: $326,364
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Dr. Nancy Foster
Co-Mgr Dig. Initiatives Unit/Lead Anthropologist
(585)273-5036; nancyf@library.rochester.edu

Project Title: "Enhancing Repositories for the Next Generation of Academics"
The River Campus Libraries of the University of Rochester will develop tools for writing dissertations in the university’s institutional repository. Researchers will examine how doctoral students currently produce their dissertations and will use the knowledge gained to create a single location for the full spectrum of research, writing, and archiving activities. Integrating a number of library functions and services, this tool will make institutional repositories more usable and will increase the amount of valuable scholarship they contain.

Syracuse University's School of Information Studies - Syracuse, NY
Award Amount: $197,635
Match Amount: $178,461
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Dr. Marilyn Arnone
Research Associate Professor
(252)249-3500; arnonemp@aol.com

Project Title: "Self-Determination and Perceived Competence in Information Seeking in Middle School"
The Syracuse University School of Information Studies’ Center for Digital Literacy will explore how eighth-grade students’ self-perceptions and other motivational factors influence how they seek information in school libraries. This research will help form a sound basis for improved practices in school libraries. Participating in the project will be Edward Deci, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, and school library media specialists in 25 schools.

Kent State University's School of Library and Information Science - Kent, OH
Award Amount: $266,789
Match Amount: $295,507
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Dr. Yin Zhang
Associate Professor
(330)672-0010; yinzhang@slis.kent.edu

Project Title: "Systems to Effectively Support User Tasks and Facilitate Information Seeking"
Researchers at Kent State’s School of Library and Information Science will examine on-line library catalogs to see whether they provide users what they need. Specifically, this project will examine catalogs based on the model developed by the International Federation of Library Association, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR). The results will allow the team to create a new FRBR-based system that will improve users’ ability to find, identify, select, and obtain access to information they need.

PALINET and Union Library Catalogue of Pennsylvania - Philadelphia, PA
Award Amount: $416,350
Match Amount: $196,076
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Mr. Thomas Clareson
Program Director for New Initiatives
(614)439-1796; clareson@palinet.org

Project Title: "Research Into Optimal Environment for Paper-Based Collections in Pennsylvania"
PALINET and Union Library Catalogue of Pennsylvania, a consortium of libraries, information centers, museums, and archives in Pennsylvania and other Mid-Atlantic states, will conduct research designed to improve the preservation of paper-based collections housed in Pennsylvania’s rare collections library. To compare the effect of a completely controlled environment on the chemical deterioration of paper with other environments, libraries and museums across Pennsylvania will measure environmental conditions in their buildings. PALINET will convene workshops and disseminate information about the research findings and best practices in preservation environments. Partners in the project are the Commonwealth Libraries of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Department of General Services, the Pennsylvania Federation of Historical and Museum Organizations and the National Archives.

James Madison University - Harrisonburg, VA
Award Amount: $225,476
Match Amount: $109,079
Grant Category: Research and Demonstration

Contact: Ms. Sandy Maxfield
Director
(540)568-6923; maxfiesl@jmu.edu

Project Title: "Making Connections: Linking MDID to Other Image Systems and Tools"
James Madison University will research and develop the means of allowing its Madison Digital Image Database (MDID) to be used by more educators and with different systems and tools. Already used round the world, MDID allows instructors to search, retrieve, organize, and teach with digital images and image data. The results of this project will allow users to access many more image collections and will serve as a model for interoperability in image systems.