Libraries seek digitization proposals

The Executive Committee for Harvard’s Library Digital Initiative (LDI) has scheduled two University-wide calls for grant proposals for digitization projects in direct support of teaching and research through the LDI Internal Challenge Grant Program.

To date, the LDI grant program has funded 38 projects (visit http://hul.harvard.edu/ldi/html/funded_projects.html to see a list of the projects) in seven prior rounds of proposals, through which more than 200 Harvard staff members have gained experience in working with digital projects and have made enormous contributions to LDI. Project goals have ranged from straightforward digitizing of images or text to creating virtual collections that combine related modern and historic material from different repositories across the University to developing new systems for the cataloging and delivery of specialized data. Many projects have focused on providing access to previously inaccessible collections and making them available online for use by students and scholars at Harvard and around the world.

Round Eight

The Round Eight deadline for preliminary proposals is Feb. 28. Proposals must provide access to high-priority digital resources that have immediate and demonstrable use in current teaching and research at Harvard. Accordingly, project managers are encouraged to identify and select content that supports current courses or ongoing research projects. For example, a successful project might catalog and digitize historical text and images from the library’s collections that relate to a course assignment or that can serve as background material for specific lectures.

For more information, consult the Call for Proposals online at http://hul.harvard.edu/ldi/html/current_call.html. In addition, to be added to the list of expected proposals, contact Wendy Gogel at wendy_gogel@harvard.edu.

Round Nine

The Round Nine call for proposals is slated for September and will focus on archiving born-digital material – in contrast to digitizing material from the University’s traditional collections. For example, a successful project might seek to archive Web sites, electronic files in an archival collection, or research data that have been collected electronically. Because Round 9 will involve technical challenges as well as digital preservation issues, and because it may entail the development of new tools, the Office for Information Systems (OIS) plans to begin immediately to consult with members of the library community who are interested in proposing projects in this area. Contact Wendy Gogel at wendy_gogel@harvard.edu to begin the process.