UF Receives $2M Grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

The grant will strengthen and sustain the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)

The George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida announced today that The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a four-year, $2,000,000 grant: Revitalizing the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC).

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dLOC is a multi-institutional, international digital library that collaborates with archives, libraries, museums and academic institutions in the Caribbean to digitize and digitally preserve rare books, newspapers and manuscripts as well as contemporary community archives, bibliographies and educational resources. dLOC’s 77 Partner Institutions are the heart of this work – contributing content to the collections and shared governance.  They have created the world’s largest open access collection from and about the Caribbean. dLOC currently hosts 321,538 items with more than 4.49 million pages of content averaging millions of views per month.

Begun in 2004 as a partnership between nine US and Caribbean institutions, dLOC provides a home for digital collections, materials and resulting scholarship, as well as the connecting framework for the community of practice related to sustaining digital libraries. dLOC provides technical assistance to community projects and activities, seeking to grow and adapt in relation to Partner needs and goals. This project will scaffold programmatic supports for executing core activities such as digitization and preservation workflows, copyright, and the ethical reuse of dLOC collections in teaching and research.

“This program offers the potential to transform the manner in which hidden content can be shared. The expected results will illuminate discoveries by users worldwide, bringing greater understanding to the history of the Caribbean and beyond.” President Kent Fuchs

Revitalizing the Digital Library of the Caribbean will impact both collection creation and community development to ensure ongoing growth of collections. This project has embraced the critical value of community collaboration and partnerships in order to build and sustain diverse library collections and scholarship, especially in the digital age—where we are more deeply connected and increasingly interdependent than ever before.” Judith C. Russell, Dean of University Libraries

“dLOC began as a dream to enable access and preservation of important materials, always with the goal of building community. This project will support dLOC Partners in realizing the dream by supporting each other and supporting people around the world in having Open Access to materials from and about the Caribbean. I am awed by the generosity of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in making this dream come true.” Laurie Taylor, Senior Director for Library Technology & Digital Strategies, Principal Investigator (PI) on the grant.

About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive.

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