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Giuliana Bullard
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America’s Libraries Awarded $10.4 Million for Projects with Far-Reaching Impact

Washington, DC— The Institute of Museum and Library Services today announced 42 grants totaling $10,431,610 to support libraries across the nation. The grants were awarded through the first cycles of the National Leadership Grants for Libraries Program and the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program.

The Awarded Grant Search on the IMLS website contains a complete list of grantees and project descriptions.

“I am pleased to announce the recipients of IMLS’s highly competitive library grant programs,” said IMLS Director Dr. Kathryn K. Matthew. “These grants leveraged over $2.7 million in matching funds from local partners and community collaborators, helping to ensure the sustainability of these projects and to enhance their reach and impact.”

National Leadership Grants for Libraries support projects that address challenges faced by the library and archive fields. These projects have the potential to advance library and archival practice with new tools, research findings, models, services, or alliances that can be widely replicated. Nearly $25 million was requested, and $5,770,682 was awarded for 26 projects, which include:

• A project of Syracuse University and Indiana University to make digital media collections in academic libraries more accessible to people who are deaf or hearing-impaired. One component of the grant is to create tools for captioning audiovisual materials through automatic speech recognition and crowdsourcing strategies.
   
• A grant to prototype a software tool to enable systematic collection and preservation of dynamic websites. The New York University Libraries and its partners will conduct a large-scale project to collect, preserve, and discover complex interactive websites created by news organizations.

The Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program supports the recruitment and education of the next generation of librarians, faculty, and library leaders. IMLS is awarding $4,660,928 of the $17.2 million requested. The 16 funded projects include:

• A project of the Young Adult Library Services Association to work with the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies to train 11,000 library staff in all 50 states and 5 U.S. territories. Building on the American Library Association’s Ready to Code Initiative, the grant will provide professional development to librarians so they can help prepare teens for computational thinking.
   
• The Community Archiving Workshop, a project of the Association of Moving Image Archivists that will offer a series of regional workshops to address the problem of obsolescence in audiovisual collections. Regional archivists and librarians will receive training by established audiovisual archivists in the essentials of care and preservation for AV collections.

Visit the IMLS website for more information about the National Leadership Grants for Libraries and Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian programs.

About the Institute of Museum and Library Services
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation's libraries and museums. We advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development. Our vision is a nation where museums and libraries work together to transform the lives of individuals and communities. To learn more, visit www.imls.gov and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.