Research Library receives Library of Congress grant

The Library of Congress announced today that it has awarded a $750,000 grant to the Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library to support research and development of tools that will help address complex problems related to collecting, storing, and accessing digital materials.

"This grant is a significant recognition of the ongoing efforts of the LANL Research Library to design, implement and operate a Digital Library repository capable of ingesting and storing the ever growing collection of digital scholarly assets," said Dr. Herbert Van de Sompel, PI for the project and Team Leader of the Digital Library Research and Prototyping team. "Research papers that detail the design of our repository work attracted the interest of the Library of Congress. The modular and fully standards-based design suggested applicability beyond the LANL Research Library. The Library of Congress funding will further focus our research and help us to explore the path of using our approach beyond LANL."

The federal grant is awarded through the Library of Congress' National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. This is a congressionally approved plan to develop a national strategy, in collaboration with other entities, for policies, protocols and strategies for the long-term preservation of digital materials.

"The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program is pleased to be working with the Los Alamos National Laboratory on a project that is so critical to the preservation of our nation’s history,” said Laura E. Campbell, associate librarian for Strategic Initiatives. “Los Alamos is a world leader in developing cutting-edge technologies in a rapidly changing environment. We anticipate that this collaboration will move the national digital preservation project closer to achieving its goals.”

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. Through its National Digital Library (NDL) Program, it is also one of the leading providers of noncommercial intellectual content on the Internet (www.loc.gov). The NDL Program’s flagship American Memory project, in collaboration with other institutions nationwide, makes freely available more than 9 million American historical items. In December 2000, Congress authorized the Library of Congress to develop and execute a congressionally approved plan for a National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. A $99.8 million congressional appropriation was made to establish the program. The goal is to build a network throughout the country of committed partners working through a preservation architecture with defined roles and responsibilities. The complete text of the “Plan for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program” is available at www.digitalpreservation.gov. This includes an explanation of how the plan was developed, who the Library worked with to develop the plan and the key components of the digital preservation infrastructure. The plan was approved by Congress in December 2002.

Posted by linn at October 26, 2004 02:07 PM