Indiana University and Northwestern University Libraries Receive Mellon Grant for Avalon

Hydra community:

I’m pleased to be able to announce that the Indiana University Libraries, in partnership with Northwestern University Library, have received a $750,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support work on the Avalon Media System project through January 2017.

This funding will help to support the following activities: 1) developing additional features and functionality for Avalon to better meet needs of collection managers and users; 2) conducting studies of use of audio and video collections by researchers in humanities disciplines to help ensure future support for scholarly use; 3) integrating the Spotlight exhibit tool with Avalon to allow librarians, archivists, and scholars to showcase and provide additional context for media items and collections; 4) developing and implementing a community-funded business and governance model to sustain ongoing support and development for Avalon; and 5) deploying Avalon in a hosted software-as-a-service model for use by institutions that need the functionality of Avalon but would prefer to utilize a cloud-based software-as-a-service option rather than support a locally hosted instance.

I’d like to offer thanks to the Hydra community for building and maintaining a solid technical foundation that enables systems such as Avalon to be built and to members of the Hydra community who have assisted with Avalon’s development by providing feedback on requirements and implementation experiences.

More information is available in a press release from Indiana University at http://news.indiana.edu/releases/iu/2015/03/mellon-grants-digital-preservation.shtml

Best,
Jon

Jon Dunn

Interim Assistant Dean for Library Technologies

Indiana University Bloomington Libraries

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