• Kudos to LB21 Recipient for Diversity Project

    March 7, 2012

    By Kevin Cherry IMLS Senior Program Officer Congratulations to Marcia Smith-Woodard of the Indiana State Library! In June 2008, IMLS awarded a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Grant to the Indiana State Library and the Indiana University School of Library Science (IU SLIS) at Indianapolis to recruit and educate 30 ethnically/racially diverse students for “Indiana's Librarians Leading in… Read more

  • IMLS on YouTube: A Few Minutes with Ian MacKaye

    March 2, 2012

    By Ellen Arnold Losey Senior Graphic Designer and Webmaster, IMLS There are a lot of important museum and library “mover and shaker” names that I hear around the IMLS Office of Communications and Government Affairs – our grantees, our partners, members of congress, etc.  But I have to say, not a one of those names has stirred the same excitement in me that I felt when I heard that Ian MacKaye… Read more

  • IMLS on YouTube: StoryCorps Founder Discusses the Central Role Museums and Libraries Play in Their Communities

    March 1, 2012

    By Kevin O'Connell, koconnell@imls.gov Dave Isay, the founder of StoryCorps made a keynote presentation at the preconference of WebWise 2012, which is investigating how libraries and museums help scholars, students, educators, and the general public understand history and the humanities. Since 2003, StoryCorps has collected and archived more than 40,000 interviews from more than 70,000… Read more

  • WebWise: Taking Us Where No One has Gone Before

    February 27, 2012

    By Charles Thomas IMLS Senior Program Officer The 2012 WebWise Conference  is a few days away and I have a special reason to be excited! I am a Trekkie, and this year’s opening keynote presenter is LeVar Burton -- a.k.a. character Geordi La Forge in the 1987-1994 television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Credit: NASA, ESA, R. O'Connell (University of Virginia), F.

  • NMAAHC Groundbreaking Brings to Mind the Work of Other African American Museums

    February 23, 2012

    By Susan Hildreth Director, IMLS Yesterday I attended the ground-breaking ceremony for construction of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

  • Throwback Video Draws Archivists to Gulf Coast Workshop

    February 21, 2012

    By Professor Elizabeth H. Dow School of Library and Information Science, Louisiana State University edow1@lsu.edu In 2008 we created the Archival Training Collaborative to provide high-quality, inexpensive, and locally accessible archival workshops for staff and volunteers in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana historical repositories.

  • The President’s Budget Request for IMLS

    February 16, 2012

    By Susan Hildreth Director, IMLS This week the President released his FY 2013 budget request to Congress. The request for IMLS demonstrates a vote of support for libraries and museums as essential to the educational ecosystem of the U.S.

  • You just never know who's going to drop by the IMLS booth in the exhibit hall!

    February 10, 2012

    By Kevin Cherry IMLS Senior Program Officer

  • IMLS on YouTube: National Aquarium Teaches with Watershed Moments

    February 3, 2012

    Please watch this video on the IMLS YouTube Channel. It features staff members of the National Aquarium in Baltimore describing "Watershed Moments," a staff-led interactive program for presentation in its 250-seat auditorium. Funded by an IMLS Museums for America grant, Watershed Moments is a key component of the aquarium's multifaceted strategic initiative for the Chesapeake Bay.

  • IMLS-Funded Research Yields New Information on Paper Stability

    January 26, 2012

    By Tim Barrett Director, University of Iowa Center for the Book Paper Facilities timothy-barrett@uiowa.edu, 319-621-2493 Research on paper permanence may seem a bit odd in the age of digital scanning and the internet, but there are a number of reasons why paper remains very important to future generations. Paper originals that can be accessed without electronic hardware and software systems… Read more