Glass at MIT exhibition, Maihaugen Gallery, photo by: L. Barry Hetherington

Gallery Talk with Roberto Rosa

Roberto Rosa, Serpentino Stained Glass

When: Friday, May 11, 2pm

Where: Institute Archives (14N-118)

In conjunction with the Glass at MIT: Beauty and Utility exhibition, Roberto Rosa from Serpentino Stained Glass will discuss stained glass art and artists, and his work in the restoration and conservation of historic stained glass.

Rosa has restored windows in some of America’s most prominent buildings including the Massachusetts State House and Trinity Church in Boston. Most recently, he was the chief conservator for thirteen opalescent glass windows at Salve Regina University in Newport RI, designed by John La Farge.

After Rosa’s talk there will be time for questions and viewing the exhibit in the Maihaugen Gallery. This event is free and open to the public.

Inside this issue:

• Read about MIT Libraries support for Open Access on campus, and beyond

• Find out why the Libraries are working with famous MIT professor Noam Chomsky

• Learn how students are unraveling the mystery behind a medieval music manuscript

• Meet the Libraries new Associate Director for Technology

• Learn about therapy dogs visiting the Libraries

• Discover new exhibits and upcoming workshops

All this and more in the latest issue of the BiblioTech newsletter. Pick up a copy at any library location or download a PDF. Subscribe by contacting dev-lib@mit.edu.

Noam Chomsky, photo credit: MIT News

MIT’s Libraries were recently chosen to be the stewards of the personal archives of noted linguist, political activist, and Institute Professor emeritus Noam Chomsky. The significant collection spans a long and distinguished career, beginning when Chomsky joined MIT in 1955 in the Research Laboratory of Electronics, through his years as a professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, then as Institute Professor.

Often referred to as “the father of modern linguistics,” Chomsky revolutionized the field of linguistics and paved the way for transformational grammar and universal grammar. His book Syntactic Structures (1957) was considered groundbreaking. He also made significant contributions to the fields of psychology, cognitive science, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind.

“It’s fitting that Professor Chomsky’s papers will remain at MIT as a resource for future generations of scholars. He revolutionized the way we think about the linguistic sciences and the cognitive mechanisms of language acquisition, and his ideas in many realms have had profound influence on scholarship and public discourse here at MIT and worldwide,” MIT President Susan Hockfield said.

Over the years, Chomsky has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Kyoto Prize in 1988 and the MIT Killian Award for the academic year 1991-1992. Most recently, he won the Sydney Peace Prize in 2011. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

“Over the last fifty years, Noam Chomsky has not only created the building blocks of linguistic theory and understanding, but has built a remarkable and unique department of Linguistics that has nurtured several generations of linguists who have taken their MIT experience into and across the globe. It is wonderful that Noam’s papers, which span this long period of growth and development, will be available to scholars for many years to come,” MIT Dean of Humanities Deborah Fitzgerald said.

The collection also reflects Chomsky’s political activism and outspoken support for freedom of speech and social justice. He was once quoted as saying, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all” (Guardian (UK), Nov.23, 1992).

He has authored numerous works on the topic, including American Power and the New Mandarins (1969), Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (2006), and Hopes and Prospects (2010).

The addition of Chomsky’s personal archives, and a large portion of his personal library, augments a small existing collection of Chomsky’s papers already in the care of the MIT Libraries’ Institute Archives.

“With this addition, the collection will be a complete archival resource that will provide researchers with unique insight into Professor Chomsky’s thinking, and the development of the field of linguistics, as well as his views on significant issues in social activism from post-WWII through current day,” MIT Institute Archivist Tom Rosko said.

Staff from the MIT Libraries and Institute Archives and Special Collections are in the beginning stages of transferring material to the Archives. Initial work in organizing the Chomsky collection will occur this year, with additional work on improving access to the collection, including online access to portions of it, continuing over the next several years. When the work is done, scholars will have unprecedented access to an enormous depth and breadth of material from one of the world’s most renowned linguists and top intellectual minds.

Date: Friday, February 10, 2-4pm
Location: Maihaugen Gallery (14N-130)

A new exhibition in the Libraries’ Maihaugen Gallery explores glassmaking as revealed in glassware from MIT laboratories, blown glass from the MIT Glass Lab, and stunning stained glass windows from the Libraries’ Charles J. Connick Stained Glass Foundation Collection. Tools, early photographs, and selections from rare books demonstrate the combination of artistry and engineering that goes into the creation of glass.

This event is free and open to the community.

Lewis Music Library, photo by L. Barry Hetherington

MIT Libraries is pleased to announce the creation of the Dr. Karl and Mrs. Margaret Grünbaum Fund for Jewish Music History at MIT’s Rosalind Denny Lewis Music Library. The fund was established with a gift from Michael Gruenbaum ’53 and his sister, the late Marietta Grünbaum Emont, in memory of their parents.

The Grünbaum family’s personal experiences with the Holocaust were at the heart of their decision to make the gift. Michael and Marietta’s father was killed in the Holocaust and they were imprisoned with their mother at the Terezin concentration camp. They later immigrated to the United States in 1950, at which point Michael enrolled at MIT. While at MIT, Michael worked part-time at the then newly-established music library with MIT’s first music librarian, Duscha Weisskopf, also a Holocaust survivor. Weisskopf spoke at MIT at a private dedication for the Fund earlier this summer.

Funded by Holocaust reparations received by the family, the Grünbaum Fund will enable important scores, recordings, video and written material by or about Jewish musicians, composers and writers to be purchased and shared with a new generation of students. Numerous materials have already been acquired and been made available to the Library’s users. The collection will continue to grow in the coming years and serve as a valuable intellectual asset for the MIT and Jewish communities.

The Rosalind Denny Lewis Music Library is located in Building 14E-109 and is open to the public.  Summer hours are Monday-Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Courtyard in bloom, photo by: Grace Liang

The Lipchitz Courtyard within Building 14 (adjacent to Hayden Library) is a hidden gem—a quiet, leafy retreat where you can find a sunny or shady spot to pull up a chair and read a book, or enjoy artwork from MIT’s Public Art Collection.  The courtyard contains three sculptures by 20th century Cubist artist Jacques Lipchitz.

The flower beds and planters in the courtyard are full of colorful flowers, thanks to the generosity of an MIT alumnus.  Stop by and see what’s in bloom!

Did you know that collections in DSpace@MIT are accessed from nearly every country in the world at an average rate of over 30,000 downloads a day?  In 2010 alone there were 11.2 million total downloads.  Read the article About DSpace@MIT.

Exhibit has been used by Data.gov to help demonstrate new ways of visualizing government data.

A $650,000 grant from the United States Library of Congress will fund work on a new version of Exhibit, the popular open source software tool developed at MIT that helps with searching, browsing and visualizing data on the Web.  The MIT Libraries, in collaboration with the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and Zepheira, LLC will redesign and expand upon features of the tool to create “Exhibit 3.0”.  The goal is to provide an enhanced tool that is scalable and useful for data management, Web display and navigation; particularly for libraries, cultural institutions and other organizations grappling with large amounts of digital content.

“This innovative work has already made a considerable impact on digital content communities whose data is diverse and complex. The visualizations bring new understanding to users and curators alike,” said Martha Anderson, Director of Program Management at the Library of Congress.

Exhibit was originally developed as part of the MIT Simile Project, a collaboration of the MIT Libraries, the MIT CSAIL, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to explore applications of the Semantic Web to problems of information management across both large-scale digital libraries and small-scale personal collections. Exhibit runs inside a Web browser and supports many types of information using common Web standards for data publishing.

Since its release, Exhibit has been used by thousands of websites worldwide across a range of diverse industries and institutions.  Most recently Exhibit has been used by Data.gov, an Open Government Initiative by President Obama’s administration to increase public access to high value data generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

The Exhibit 3.0 project will redesign and re-implement Exhibit to scale from small collections to very large data collections of the magnitude created by the Library of Congress and its National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP).  The redesigned Exhibit will be as simple to use as the current tool but more scalable, more modular, and easier to integrate into a variety of information management systems and websites—making it valuable to an even larger audience of individuals and organizations publishing information on the Web.

In addition to the Library of Congress, the MIT Libraries and other organizations that manage large quantities of data will collaborate on the project for their own collections.

“Libraries are dealing with more and bigger collections of digital data every day, and tools like Exhibit pave the way to making them more useful and easier to combine in new and valuable ways. We’re grateful to the Library of Congress for helping us take Exhibit to the next level and getting it into the hands of librarians and others who work in data-intensive fields,” said MacKenzie Smith, research director at the MIT Libraries and the project’s principal investigator.

Users of the software and software developers will be encouraged to contribute improvements to the open source tool and the project will also incorporate research by students at MIT’s CSAIL that will focus on improving the user experience working with data in Exhibit, and incorporating new data visualization techniques that allow users to explore data in novel ways.

“Impressive data-interactive sites abound on the Web, but right now you need a team of developers to create them.  Exhibit demonstrated that authoring data-interactive sites can be as easy as authoring a static web page.  With Exhibit 3.0 we can move from a prototype to a robust platform that anyone can use,” said David Karger, computer science professor with CSAIL.

The project began in January for a period of one year.  For more information see http://simile-widgets.org/exhibit3

Monica Isava, an MIT undergraduate student in Mechanical Engineering, recently won an iPod nano in Knovel’s University Challenge! More than 10,000 students from 40 countries entered the contest. Pictured above are: Monica Isava and Angie Locknar (Mechanical Engineering Librarian).

Although the contest is over, you can still use Knovel in your own research! Knovel offers fulltext access to many leading science and engineering reference works. Try it for yourself!

This summer the flower beds and planters in the courtyard have been replanted and new patio umbrellas installed, thanks to the generosity of an MIT alumnus who’s interested in keeping the courtyard an inviting and well-used community space.  Now it’s even more of an oasis.  Come check it out!

To learn more about the public art in and around Hayden Library and other locations on campus see the List Visual Arts Center’s interactive map.

A bookplate featuring the portrait of Theodore N. Vail, who donated the collection to MIT in 1912.

Records for the Vail Collection – one of the world’s foremost rare book collections on electricity, electrical engineering, magnetism, and lighter-than-air travel – are beginning to appear in Barton, the Libraries’ online catalog.  This historic collection comprises some 25,000 volumes and includes materials dating as far back as the mid-16th century, but it’s been hidden for decades because electronic catalog records hadn’t been created.

A generous gift from Thomas F. Peterson, Jr. (Class of 1957) has made it possible to fully catalog the Vail Collection, and perform essential conservation work.

As these materials are cataloged they can be explored via the Vail RSS page which has a listing of Vail titles (with links to Barton catalog records), or by subscribing to the Vail Collection RSS feed.  Due to the delicate nature of these materials they cannot be checked out, but are available for room use in the Institute Archives.

This massive work became infamous in its day as an enlightened attack on French and European religious dogmatism and monarchical inefficiency and injustice. Containing over 2,500 elaborately engraved plates, it documented the mechanical arts and technology, placing equal importance on the manual trades as the arts and sciences.

Curated by Jeffrey S. Ravel, MIT Associate Professor of History, and Kristel Smentek, MIT Assistant Professor of Art History, the exhibit features fascinating images chosen from the 32 original folio volumes owned by the MIT Libraries, as well as multimedia components illustrating the Encylopedie’s significance.  The exhibit is open to the public Mon.-Thurs. during gallery hours, and runs through July 2010.

Inside this issue:

• Learn about new and improved places to study in Barker & Dewey Libraries

• Connect with the Libraries on your mobile phone

• Read about the Libraries’ book that traveled into space

• Discover how a generous gift from an MIT alumnus is revealing a hidden collection in the Libraries

• Learn how Rotch librarians are helping to archive and share thousands of digital architectural images

• Follow the latest Libraries exhibits, events and more

Get a PDF copy of BiblioTech or subscribe by emailing  dev-lib@mit.edu.

The MIT Community is invited to an opening reception on Friday, October 23, 1-3pm in the Maihaugen Gallery (14N-130). Check out the exhibit and enjoy refreshments with friends!

Cuthbert demonstrates that when it comes to medieval and renaissance music manuscripts, there’s really no substitute for the real thing. His discussion covers several recent additions to MIT’s Lewis Music Library.

View a video of the lecture online at MIT World, a free and open site that provides on demand video of significant public events at MIT.

For centuries humans have been fascinated by the concept of flight. From simple attempts to fashion human wings to the serious science of space exploration, our fascination with flight has been constant and compelling, and has literally known no earthly bounds. This allure is the focus of a new exhibit in the MIT Libraries’ Maihaugen Gallery.

The Fascination of Flight showcases both the dream and the reality of flight through historical materials, archival records, and current collections owned by the MIT Libraries.

The exhibit also highlights the pioneering work of the Institute’s faculty, students and heroic graduates and acknowledges their contributions to the science of powered flight.

The MIT community is invited to an opening celebration for the exhibit on Wednesday, April 1 from 1-3 pm.

The MIT Libraries were recently given 37 hand-colored lithographs from John James Audubon’sViviparous Quadrupeds of North America. The rare lithographs were generously donated by Mr. Ron Juster and family, in honor of Josh Juster, M. Eng. 2004. Several of the prints from the collection can be viewed in the Libraries’ Maihaugen Gallery where they are on display as part of the Celebration of Gifts exhibit.

The prints embody one of the 19th century’s most artistically successful attempts to catalog, illustrate, and promote understanding of the natural world. Following the monumental success of his publication Birds of America, naturalist and artist John James Audubon (1785-1851) attempted to produce accurate illustrations of every quadruped native to North America. In an effort to limit such a massive undertaking, he decided to include only viviparous animals (those that give birth to live young). The result was 150 paintings that are widely celebrated for both their scientific accuracy and their artistic beauty.

The Celebration of Gifts exhibit runs through February 19th in the Maihaugen Gallery, adjacent to the Institute Archives (14N-118). Gallery hours are Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m.- 4 p.m.

Arthur Dehon Little (1863-1935) attended MIT as an undergraduate student in chemistry from 1881 to 1884 and was a co-founder and editor of the student newspaper, The Tech. The firm he founded in 1909, Arthur D. Little, Inc., grew into one of the world’s foremost independent consulting and research organizations with an unmatched reputation for excellence in devising novel solutions to challenging problems and leading the way in management systems development. Over its lifetime, the company worked with MIT on numerous research projects and employed a number of MIT graduates and researchers. Arthur D. Little, Inc.’s longstanding relationship with MIT made the Institute Archives a fitting home for ADL, Inc.’s archives.

The Arthur D. Little, Inc. Collection was purchased at auction by the ADL, Inc. Alumni Association and given to MIT in 2002. It was recently made available to the public in the MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections. Selected items from the ADL Collection, as well as several items on loan from ADL alumni, will be on display through October 31 in the MIT Libraries’ Maihaugen Gallery. An online exhibit “Scatter Acorns That Oaks May Grow” is also available. The exhibit takes its name from the ADL, Inc. motto, Glandes Sparge Ut Quercus Crescant.

The first exhibit: A Celebration of Gifts will feature rare and unique items donated to the Libraries by MIT alumni, faculty, and friends. Among the treasures that will be exhibited to the public for the first time are items from the collection of the Institute’s founder, William Barton Rogers. The exhibit will also include original notebooks from Harold “Doc” Edgerton, several rare books including a first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and a book of illustrations from the 1553 volume Historiae animalium by Konrad Gesner. Also featured will be items from the personal library of architect Charles Bulfinch, balloon prints from the Vail Collection, books by architect Santiago Calatrava with original artwork, works from the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, and other items given to the Libraries.

The new facility is located adjacent to the Institute Archives (14N-118). The celebration will begin at 1pm with remarks by Ann Wolpert, director of the Libraries. Refreshments will be served. Please join us!

Photos by: L. Barry Hetherington, Bottom photo: Copyright Harold E. Edgerton 1992 Trust

The bluegrass reader / edited by Thomas Goldsmith. ML3520.B58 2006	Davis, Miles. Miles Davis. M85.D3857 2006 [score & audio CD]	MacColl, Ewan. The ballad of John Axon: a radio-ballad about the railwaymen of England. 1475467 [precat]
MacColl, Ewan. The body blow: a radio-ballad about the psychology of pain. 1475477 [precat]	MacColl, Ewan. On the edge: a radio-ballad about teenagers in England and Scotland. 1475478 [precat]	Ratliff, Ben. Coltrane: the story of a sound. ML419.C645.R37 2007
Smith, Craig. Sing my whole life long: Jenny Vincent’s life in folk music and activism. ML420.V379.S65 2007	Seeger, Mike. Talking feet: buck, flatfoot, and tap: solo Southern dance of the Appalachian, Piedmont, and Blue Ridge Mountain Regions. GV1624.A7.S44 1992	Talking feet: DVD 1484452 [precat]

History of the Pierce fund: In 1987, Mrs. Alice Pierce established an endowed fund in honor of her late husband, John N. Pierce ’54. Arnold (’57) and Margit Orange and other donors have contributed generously to the fund. Mr. Pierce spent many hours in the Music Library between classes, and this is a particularly meaningful way for his family and friends to honor his memory. The income from the fund was first used to purchase materials in early music and blues; in 2007 the scope was expanded to include jazz and folk.

The Lewis Music Library is located in Bldg.14E-109 and library hours are posted on the web.

Read about MIT Libraries’ news in the latest issue of BiblioTech.  In this issue:

• From the Director–a column by Ann Wolpert, Director of Libraries
• New Technologies–an article about the Libraries’ beta projects
• From the Archives–a column by Tom Rosko, Head of the Institute Archives & Special Collections
• Supporting the Libraries–news about recent gifts to the Libraries
• DSpace Community Grows–an article about the newly formed DSpace Foundation
• Saving Endangered Languages–an article about preserving the work of late MIT linguistics professor Kenneth Hale

Get a PDF copy of BiblioTech or subscribe by emailing your name and address to dev-lib@mit.edu.

Consisting of over 1200 items, the collection is replete with wonderful images providing visual documentation of man’s vision of flying vehicles and human flight.  Images range from the fanciful to depictions of real events, such as the balloon sent up by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783.  Broadsides, articles, and clippings recount the history of man’s efforts to fly over the last three centuries, relating or commenting on individual efforts – some celebratory and other detailing the fatal results of failures.

The digitization of this premiere collection of prints will allow the world to better access these treasures; it is also a critical first step in their long-term preservation.  The project will also serve as a model for future digitization projects within the Libraries.

The gift will impact many areas of research at MIT’s biomedical research centers, as well as MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department.  New collections in the life sciences will help support vital research in the fields of developmental biology, stem cells, genetics, and genomics.

In the past the Clive W. Lacy and Mona M. Lacy Trusts has also provided essential funding for library reference collections.  The Lacy family’s connection to MIT includes several MIT alumni; Clive W. Lacy ’15, John W. Lacy ’42, Thomas B. Lacy ’48, and William R. Lacy ’43.

Today HP and the MIT Libraries announced the formation of the DSpace Foundation, a non-profit organization that will provide support to the growing community of organizations that use DSpace, an open source software solution for accessing, managing and preserving scholarly works in a digital archive. Jointly developed by HP and the MIT Libraries beginning in 2002, today more than 200 projects worldwide are using the software to digitally capture, preserve and share their artifacts, documents, collections and research data.

The foundation will assume responsibility for providing leadership and support to the ever growing DSpace community and promote even wider distribution and use. Michele Kimpton, formerly of the Internet Archive (www.archive.org), will serve as Executive Director of the DSpace Foundation. Prior to joining DSpace, Kimpton led web-archiving technology and services at the Internet Archive where, as one of its founding directors, she initiated and managed several open source software projects to collect, access and preserve web pages from national libraries and archives.

See full story

Photo of MIT’s Stata Center by Andy Ryan

A $724,415 grant from The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has been awarded to the MIT Libraries to address the challenge of preserving digital Computer-Aided Design (CAD) files.

CAD has revolutionized the architectural industry, giving architects the ability to create astounding three-dimensional models.  However CAD models exist only in proprietary digital formats that are ever-changing and short-lived, making them difficult to preserve and manage over time.  Using the designs of renowned architect Frank Gehry and his work on MIT’s Stata Center as a test bed, the FACADE (Future-proofing Architectural Computer-Aided Design) project will study CAD architectural documents and create preservation strategies to stem their potential loss.

Over the next two years the MIT Libraries’ Digital Libraries Research Group (DLRG) will work with MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning to research the primary software products (such as CATIA®, AutoCAD® and Microstation®) that produce architectural CAD models. With the guidance of former dean of the School of Architecture and Planning Bill Mitchell, the researchers will examine the role of CAD files in the life cycle of modern architecture and building construction including the entire digital and paper trail from early designs and sketches to internal communications regarding onsite revisions. They will seek strategies for long-term preservation of this material and also investigate the optimal use of digital preservation archives, such as the DSpace digital repository system, to provide open-source solutions.

Read the full article in BiblioTech (pages 8-9)
Visit the FACADE project web page

Click on a name to see the Barton library catalog record:

• Jeanne Bamberger. Interview no. 1, May 27, 2005; Interview no. 2, June 7, 2005.
  ML385.M86.B36 2006 v.1-2
• John Corley. Interview no. 1, August 19, 1999; Interview no. 2, September 3, 1999; Interview no. 3, December 10, 1999.
  ML385.M86.C67 2006 v.1-3
• Cherry Emerson. Interview no. 1, November 28, 2000; Interview no. 2, November 30, 2000.
  ML385.M86.E46 2006 v.1-2
• Stephen Erdely. Interview no. 1, March 24, 1999; Interview no. 2, August 4, 1999.
  ML385.M86.E74 2006 v.1-2
• Herb Pomeroy. Interview no. 1, December 14, 1999; Interview no. 2, April 5, 2000; Interview no. 3, April 26, 2000.
  ML385.M86.P66 2006 v.1-3
• Claudia Von Canon. Interview no. 1, October 3, 2001; Interview no. 2, October 9, 2001.
  ML385.M86.V66 2006 v.1-2

CDs circulate for 3 days (limit of 5, no renewals). The Lewis Music Library is located in Bldg. 14E-109 and library hours are posted on the web.

Click on an image to see its Barton library catalog record:

Frühe Lautentabulaturen im Faksimile = Early lute tabulatures in facsimile. M140.F78 2003 [Special Collections]	Il codice Squarcialupi: Ms. Mediceo Palatino 87, Biblioteca laurenziana di Firenze. M2.S72 1992 [Special Collections]
Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, MS Urbinate Latino 1411. ML94.5.B53814 2006 [Special Collections]	Hildegard, Saint. Lieder: Faksimile Riesencodex (Hs. 2). M2112.H44.S9 1998 [Special Collections]
Basses danses dites de Marguerite d’Autriche. GV1796.B28.B27 1987 [Special Collections]

The Lewis Music Library is located in Bldg. 14E-109 and library hours are posted on the web.

For over 100 years, music has been a vibrant part of MIT’s culture. Kinney’s gift will help ensure this legacy is preserved for the historical record by providing the funding needed to conduct in-depth interviews with five individuals per year for the next five years. It will also allow the library to identify key interview subjects and obtain information about MIT’s music history that has not been documented in other sources.

As interviews are completed, they will be available for listening in the library. Written transcripts will also be available. For more information about the project and to see a list of recorded interviews, go to http://libraries.mit.edu/music/oralhistory/index.html.

The project, called SIMILE, brings together researchers from the MIT Libraries Digital Library Research Group (DLRG) and the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) to create next-generation search technology using Semantic Web standards–a group of standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium to promote large-scale interoperability and reusability of content on the Web.

“With digital content increasing at a rapid rate; searching for, sorting through, and managing millions of digital documents is a serious challenge for today’s libraries and the libraries of tomorrow,” said MacKenzie Smith, Associate Director for Technology at MIT Libraries. Semantic Web technologies offer a way to make searching and navigating large digital libraries easier.

The new SIMILE work funded by the Mellon Foundation will focus on building software tools that can be used with large collections of digital content from the higher education and cultural heritage sectors. These will include authoring and editing tools, searching and browsing tools, tools for data management, and storage technologies to meet the needs of scholars, researcher and students. SIMILE technology will also be applied to DSpace, the open source digital archiving platform created by the MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard to manage and make accessible millions of digital documents including research articles and scientific databases.