--- Begin Message ---****************** 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 ============================================================== See and search back issues of NINCH-ANNOUNCE at <http://www.cni.org/Hforums/ninch-announce/>. ============================================================== ---- End included message ----
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