Library of the American Museum of Natural History receives $2m grant

Citation

(1999), "Library of the American Museum of Natural History receives $2m grant", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 27 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.1999.12227dab.007

Library of the American Museum of Natural History receives $2m grant

Keywords National resources, History, Science

The Library of the American Museum of Natural History has been awarded a $2m grant, from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for digitising unique holdings within the Library and Museum.

The Museum has one of the largest natural-history libraries in the Western Hemisphere. Among the treasures housed in the Museum Library are rare and unique books and manuscripts spanning 500 years of scientific and expedition literature. In addition, the Mellon digitisation project will also include scientific material from the Museum's total collections of some 32 million Museum specimens and cultural artefacts. When fully developed, the Museum's new digital library will yield for the first time an integrated database of Museum Library resources and natural history collections enabling scientists, scholars and the public to study unique and rare research materials at one Web site.

The focus of the initial 18-month pilot programme that began in July 1999, will be the Lang-Chapin Expedition (1909-1915) to what was then the Belgian Congo to make the first comprehensive biological survey of the area. A five-year programme to expand this initial prototype will follow the pilot study. The goal of the project is to provide the opportunity to study a range of published and primary source material, all by visiting a single Web site. This will enable scientists and scholars working at remote locations, often without access to libraries, to gain access to important materials that would otherwise be available only at the Museum.

"Digitization of our collections will be a powerful resource for our scientists and the general public," said Mike Novacek, Provost of the Museum. "The Museum is committed to using the most sophisticated technology in our efforts to share our vast stores of valuable scientific and natural history materials."

The Museum Library will focus on three important groups of digital library users: scientists and students at universities and other research institutions both in the US and abroad; scientists in developing countries who lack access to adequate libraries and have limited resources; and a broader audience of educators, students, and members of the public.

For further information visit the Library of the American Museum of Natural History's Web site at: http://nimidi.amnh.org/library.html

Source: Press release