Library Stuff

“The Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners today announced that they have awarded eight communities General Construction Provisional Grants awards. Governor Patrick increased funding for the Public Library Construction Program in the administration’s FY13-FY17 Capital Plan to allow for these eight additional grants, which will assist with the cost of construction over the course of the next few years. “Public libraries are a valuable resource for cities, towns and residents across the Commonwealth,” said Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray. “These grants, and others before it, will assist municipalities with construction of top-notch, environmentally-conscious facilities that will serve residents for many years to come.”

via Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners

“The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded more than $2.5 million to museums and libraries developing innovative programs to prepare young children for school and to ensure they don’t lose ground over the summer. These projects, part of an IMLS initiative to support the goals of the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, were among those receiving National Leadership Grants (NLG) announced by IMLS last week. In December 2011, IMLS announced that it would provide up to $2 million over two years to museums and libraries for projects that further the work of the campaign, which aims to increase the number of low-income children reading on grade level by the end of third grade. Museums and libraries throughout the U.S. answered the call with so many strong proposals that IMLS awarded more than $2.5 million this year and plans to repeat the call again next year.”

via IMLS

“The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced today a $250,000 grant to support the development of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). The National Leadership Grant for Libraries in the Advancing Digital Resources category will help fund the launch of the DPLA’s Digital Hubs Pilot Program, a project that will take the first steps to bring together existing U.S. digital library infrastructure into a sustainable national digital library system”

via Digital Public Library of America

“The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded a $99,957 grant to OCLC for a new initiative, “The Big Shift: Advancing Public Library Participation in Our Digital Future.” The purpose of the grant is to more fully understand the challenges that U.S. public libraries face in providing e-book content to borrowers, as they ensure that all Americans continue to have access to commercially produced content through their local public libraries, even as formats change. OCLC will partner with the American Library Association (ALA) and the Public Library Association (PLA) to review the e-book landscape and jointly develop recommendations for managing the e-book environment, in order to ensure adequate public access to these emerging resources.”

via OCLC

Press Release - The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded Penn’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library a grant of $300,000 to digitize and make available on the World Wide Web a collection of approximately 1,000 European and American manuscripts from 1601 to 1800. This two-year project builds on and expands the work of a proposal funded by the NEH in 2009 to digitize Penn’s European manuscripts dated before 1601, which has produced the Web site, Penn in Hand: Selected Manuscripts. “The Penn Libraries are honored to be the recipients of this grant from the NEH, which will allow us to more than double the scope of Penn in Hand,” remarked H. Carton Rogers, Vice Provost and Director of Libraries. “Adding manuscripts to 1800 will greatly benefit scholars across disciplines as varied as art history, legal studies, music, religion, history, and literature in Western languages.”

AP – ” Former first lady Laura Bush is set to appear at a Dallas elementary school to announce school libraries that will be receiving grants from her foundation to buy books.
Bush is herself a former public school teacher and librarian. She’ll announce Thursday morning that the Laura W. Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries will announce more than $1 million in grants to 241 schools across the United States.”

NYT – “Teams of scholars have spent nearly 30 years tracking down, researching and editing the more than 15,000 letters written by or to Charles Darwin. Now, thanks to $8.2 million in grants from the Evolution Education Trust, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Isaac Newton Trust, the entire collection will be published in full by 2022. Texts of some 6,000 letters and information on 9,000 more are already available here.”