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[Fwd: Digital Library Initiative-Phase 2 Welcomes Humanities Projects]



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NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT
February 23, 1998



               DIGITAL LIBRARIES INITIATIVE--PHASE 2 ANNOUNCED
              <http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1998/nsf9863/nsf9863.htm>

                                 *  *  *

       $50 MILLION MAJOR GRANT OPPORTUNITY INCLUDES ARTS & HUMANITIES

                                 *  *  *

NEH, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, SMITHSONIAN & NARA PARTNER WITH NSF, NASA & OTHERS

                                =========

              FOR NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR HUMANITIES RELEASE SEE:
                 <http://www.neh.gov/html/guidelin/dli2.html>


Below is a preliminary posting of a major national grant opportunity for
the cultural community interested in expanding research and demonstration
projects in networking our cultural resources.

Awards for individual investigators can reach $200,000 a year for 1 to 3
years. Multi-disciplinary group research projects can reach $1,200,000 per
year, for 1 to 5 years.

The National Endowment for the Humanities is a full partner with the
National Science Foundation and other sponsors of this second phase of the
"Digital Libraries Initiative." [For the projects funded in the first phase
of DLI, see <http://www.cise.nsf.gov/iris/DLHome.html>.]  In its
announcement, the NEH invites the community to consider making proposals in
a range of areas. It suggests "projects that focus on issues important to
the effective creation, use, and preservation of digitized humanities
collections."

As part of this grant initiative, NEH "could support the creation of
testbeds comprising digitized humanities collections from libraries,
archives, museums, and historical organizations; the development and
testing of metadata for describing and preserving access to digital
humanities objects; and other activities that establish a clearer
understanding of the ways in which digitized collections can be used for
education, research, and public programming in the humanities."

Letters of intent for the first of two rounds will be due by APRIL 15, 1998.

Details of application workshops will be announced shortly.

Although opportunities for individual projects abound, I trust that this
community will spend considerable effort considering cross-sector,
multi-disciplinary collaborative projects.

Stay tuned for more information.

Below I reproduce first the announcement on the NEH webpage and then the
announcement from the National Science Foundation.

David Green

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>



The Digital Library Initiative -- Phase II is conducted through the
National Science Foundation in cooperation with federal agency sponsors and
partners. The purpose of the initiative is to foster research and
demonstration projects that promise to increase the useability of globally
distributed, networked information resources.

 The initiative addresses the entire life cycle of digital information: its
creation, accessibility, and preservation. Successful applicants will
conduct research designed to open new areas of activity in the digital
library field, demonstrate tools and methods for providing digitized
information to a broad range of users, and explore ways of preserving
access to digital information into the future.


*DLI2 at NSF*
As a sponsor of the digital library initiative, the National Endowment for
the Humanities, through its Division of Preservation and Access, offers
support for components of digital library projects that focus on issues
important to the effective creation, use, and preservation of digitized
humanities collections. NEH could support the creation of testbeds
comprising digitized humanities collections from libraries, archives,
museums, and historical organizations; the development and testing of
metadata for describing and preserving access to digital humanities
objects; and other activities that establish a clearer understanding of the
ways in which digitized collections can be used for education, research,
and public programming in the humanities.

====================
>Sent: Friday, February 20, 1998 12:27 PM
>From: Les Gasser [SMTP:gasser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
>To: gasser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Digital Libraries Initiative - Phase 2 Announced

Digital Libraries Initiative - Phase 2
Announcement Number NSF 98-63 (NEW)

See: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1998/nsf9863/nsf9863.htm

DUE DATES:
FY 1998 Competition
- -------------------
Letters of Intent: April 15, 1998
Full Proposals:    July 15, 1998

FY 1999 Competition
- -------------------
Letters of Intent: February 15, 1999
Full Proposals:    May 17, 1999


INTRODUCTION
Innovative digital libraries research and applications will be jointly
supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Library of Medicine (NLM),
the Library of Congress (LoC), the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and
others.

This announcement describes the goals and features of Digital Libraries
Initiative - Phase 2 (DLI-2), with particular attention on NSF interests
and requirements. More detailed information on the domain-specific
interests of the partnering agencies may be obtained from them. Within NSF,
DLI-2 is administered by the Division of Information and Intelligent
Systems (IIS) of the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and
Engineering (CISE). Supporting Directorates include the Directorate for
Education and Human Resources and the Directorate for Social, Behavioral
and Economic Sciences. Contacts for these and related activities at other
agencies are referenced at the end of this announcement.

The current effort extends the joint NSF/DARPA/NASA "Research on Digital
Libraries Initiative". Since announcement of that initiative, digital
libraries research and applications efforts have proliferated; new
communities of researchers, information providers and users have become
engaged; the definition of a digital library has evolved; technologies have
advanced; stores of digital content have increased dramatically; and new
research directions have emerged. These advances point to a future in which
vast amounts of digital information will be easily accessible to and usable
by large segments of the world's population.

To help achieve this, the Digital Libraries Initiative - Phase 2 plans
to:

*  Selectively build on and extend research and testbed activities in
promising digital libraries areas;
*  Accelerate development, management and accessibility of digital content
and collections;
*  Create new capabilities and opportunities for digital libraries to serve
existing and new user communities, including all levels of education;
*  Encourage the study of interactions between humans and digital libraries
in various social and organizational contexts.

Electronic information is being created by many people and data gathering
instruments in many forms and formats, stored in many repositories around
the world, and becoming increasingly interconnected via electronic
networks. Digital libraries research is faced with the challenge of
applying increasing computational capacity and network bandwidth to manage
and bring coherence, usability, and accessibility to very large amounts of
distributed complex data and transform it into information and knowledge.

Since digital libraries are meant to provide intellectual access to stores
of information, research in this initiative is concerned with developing
concepts, technologies and tools to gain use of the fuller knowledge and
meaning inherent in digital collections. For example, for users this means
intelligent search, retrieval, organization and presentation tools and
interfaces; for content and collections providers this means new
information types, structures, document encoding and metadata for enhancing
context; for system builders this means designing hardware and software
systems capable of interpreting and implementing users' requests by
locating, federating and querying collections to provide the user with the
structured information sought.

PROGRAM GOALS
The primary purposes of this initiative are to provide leadership in
research fundamental to the development of the next generation of digital
libraries, to advance the use and usability of globally distributed,
networked information resources, and to encourage existing and new
communities to focus on innovative applications areas.

Since digital libraries can serve as intellectual infrastructure, this
Initiative looks to stimulate partnering arrangements necessary to create
next-generation operational systems in such areas as education, engineering
and design, earth and space sciences, biosciences, geography, economics,
and the arts and humanities. It will address the digital libraries life
cycle from information creation, access and use, to archiving and
preservation.

Research to gain a better understanding of the long term social, behavioral
and economic implications of and effects of new digital libraries
capabilities in such areas of human activity as research, education,
commerce, defense, health services and recreation is an important part of
this initiative.

Collaboration between academic, industry, non-profit and other
organizations is strongly encouraged to establish better linkages between
fundamental science and technologies development and use, through
partnerships among researchers, applications developers and users.

.....

CATEGORIES OF SUPPORT

All awards for this announcement made by NSF will be as grants or
cooperative agreements to academic institutions and qualified non-profit
research organizations. Partnership arrangements with other groups are
encouraged, including subcontracts with the single proposing organization.

NSF expects to fund two general types of projects under this initiative:

1. Individual investigator research grants.
   Awards will not exceed $200,000 per year, for 1 to 3 years.
2. Multi-disciplinary group research projects.
   Awards will not exceed $1,200,000 per year, for 1 to 5 years.

The number of awards will depend on the quality of proposals received, the
availability of funds, and considerations for creating a balanced overall
program. Total support for the initiative from federal sponsors is
projected to be $40-$50 million over the 5 year Initiative.  Awards will
not exceed $1,200,000 per year, except in exceptional circumstances. Ideas
for projects requiring support above this level should be discussed with
the NSF program officer before proposal preparation.

****************************************************************

Please see the full announcement for additional information.

****************************************************************

NOTES:

1. We are seeking CREATIVE proposals at ALL levels that will significantly
advance digital libraries research. I would like to encourage the
Information and Data Management Program community to play an active role in
the conception of innovative DLI proposals.

2. Although there is overlap between Knowledge and Distibuted Intelligence
(KDI), Program Annoucement NSF 98-55
(http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf9855), in particular its Knowledge
Networking component, and Digital Libraries, note that the Digital
Libraries Initiative (DLI) is strongly interested in collections and users.
Proposals for DLI should involve people making use of information (or make
it clear that users' needs are the driving motivation of the proposed
research).

KDI is a fundamental research support program which does not stress
collections of information.  All KDI proposals, however, must be
interdisciplinary.  If the focus of a proposal is on information or user
communities which now exist, it may be better in DLI; if the focus is on
the creation of new information or communities, it is perhaps better in
KDI.

3. Inquiries:
   Stephen M. Griffin
   Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS)
   Program Director: Special Projects
                     Digital Libraries Initiative
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
Mail: National Science Foundation      | e-mail: sgriffin@xxxxxxx
      4201 Wilson Boulevard, Room 1115 | phone:  (703) 306-1930
      Arlington, VA  22230             | fax:    (703) 306-0599
- -----------------------------------------------------------------

4. Information on DLI - Phase I projects, see:
   http://www.cise.nsf.gov/iris/DLHome.html

===============================================================

David L. Green
Executive Director
NATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR A NETWORKED CULTURAL HERITAGE
21 Dupont Circle, NW
Washington DC 20036
www-ninch.cni.org
david@xxxxxxxxx
202/296-5346                                  202/872-0886 fax

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See and search back issues of NINCH-ANNOUNCE at
<http://www.cni.org/Hforums/ninch-announce/>.
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