Mellon Grants CLIR $4.27 Million for Program to Catalog Hidden Collections
Mellon Grants CLIR $4.27 Million for Program to Catalog Hidden Collections
From the announcement:
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) $4.27 million to create a national program to identify and catalog hidden special collections and archives.
Through a national competition, the program will award funds to institutions holding collections of high scholarly value that are difficult or impossible to locate through finding aids. Award recipients will create descriptive information for their hidden collections that will be linked to and interoperable with all other projects funded by this grant, to form a federated environment that can be built upon over time.
CLIR will issue a request for proposals by early June, and decisions will be announced in fall 2008. CLIR expects to award about $4 million in the first cycle. It is possible that the program will be extended for subsequent funding cycles over five years.
“Librarians and archivists have long despaired at the huge amount of intellectually valuable information that, for lack of cataloging, is unknown or inaccessible to scholars,” said CLIR Board Chairperson Paula Kaufman. “This award to CLIR underscores the importance of the hidden collections problem and supports a coordinated, national response. On behalf of the community and the CLIR Board, I want to express my deep gratitude to the Mellon Foundation for its decision to support this important initiative.”
Source: Council on Library and Information Resources