At the CNI meeting this week, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced the third annual Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration. Totally $650,000 in award money, the awards "honor not‐for‐profit organizations for leadership in the collaborative development of open source software tools with application to scholarship in the arts and humanities, as well as cultural-heritage not‐for‐profit activities."
Awards are given at two levels: $50,000 awards to recognize important organizational contributions to open source projects which currently or potentially provide significant benefits to at least one traditional Mellon constituency; and $100,000 awards to recognize highly significant contributions to open source projects offering larger benefits to more or larger constituencies. Multiple awards may be bestowed at each level, at the discretion of the Award Committee and the Trustees of the Foundation.
Awardees this year of particular note for the library community include:
- $100,000 to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Champaign, IL: www.illinois.edu) for leadership and development work on Project Archon, a set of archiving tools (www.archon.org).
- $50,000 to George Mason University (Fairfax, VA: www.gmu.edu) for the development and release of the Omeka cultural heritage collections Web presentation system (omeka.org).
- $50,000 to the University of Waikato (Waikato, NZ: www.waikato.ac.nz) for the development and release of Project Greenstone, a set of tools for the creation of digital libraries (www.greenstone.org).
- $50,000 to Villanova University (Villanova, PA: www.villanova.edu) for the development and release of Project VUFind, resource portal software for academic libraries (www.vufind.org).
Congratulations to all for the work for which you have been recognized.
About Roy Tennant