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November 14, 2007
William Paterson University Awarded Federal Grant to Create A Statewide Digital Video Repository
--Prestigious grant from Institute of Museum and Library Services provides for development of strategic initiative for streaming video for New Jersey higher education, K-12, libraries and cultural institutions
William Paterson University in Wayne, in collaboration with Rutgers University and NJEDge.net, has been awarded nearly $1 million by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to create a statewide digital video archive comprised of a wide range of educational materials that will provide streaming video to New Jersey colleges and universities, K-12 schools, libraries and cultural heritage institutions.
The three-year IMLS National Leadership Grant will support the launch of NJVid: New Jersey Video Portal, which will provide educators, students and lifelong learners with centralized access to a variety of tools and services, including video lectures on demand, licensed commercial videos, and locally owned videos, via a Web-based streaming video portal. Three major New Jersey consortia that represent most educational organizations in the state will incorporate and share their video resources via the portal: VALE (Virtual Academic Library Environment), a statewide academic library consortium with 50 members; NJEDge.net, which provides optical broadband network services to 51 higher education members; and New Jersey Digital Highway, the statewide cultural heritage consortium which includes museums, archives, libraries, and historical societies.
“Digital video provides a multi-sensory experience that is an increasingly important resource for teaching and learning,” says Sandra Miller, director of instruction and research technology at William Paterson University and principal investigator for the project. “The goal of this project is to expand New Jersey’s digital media collections in academic institutions, libraries, museums, and other historical collections and archives, and provide easy access to those resources via the Web for students, faculty, and citizens any place and any time.”
William Paterson will be responsible for developing the Web-based portal for users. Rutgers University and NJEdge.net will provide technical development and the ongoing technical infrastructure, including a centralized video storage repository and an infrastructure for housing and managing a variety of digital video objects.
“One of the exciting aspects of this grant is the opportunity to develop a statewide information strategy that will serve any cultural heritage institution, school or university regardless of size or technical readiness,” says Marianne I. Gaunt, university librarian, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. “NJVid will provide a model for statewide cyber-infrastructure that can be adopted by any other state.”
In addition to William Paterson University and Rutgers University, eight other institutions will serve as initial testers of this model integrated resource: University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Montclair State University, Georgian Court College, Atlantic Cape Community College, Middlesex County College, Passaic Valley High School, the Bergen County Cooperative Library System (BCCLS), and the American Labor Museum. NJVid will utilize a variety of cutting edge, open source software programs that can serve the diversity of organizations in the grant project’s various consortia.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 122,000 libraries and 15,000 museums. Through its grant making, convenings, research and publications, the Institute empowers museums and libraries nationwide to provide leadership and services to enhance learning in families and communities, sustain cultural heritage, build twenty-first-century skills, and increase civic participation. Its National Leadership Grants help libraries and museums collaborate, build digital resources, and conduct research and demonstration projects. The selected projects are national models that will help foster individual achievement, community responsibility, and lifelong learning.
William Paterson University, one of the nine state colleges and universities in New Jersey, offers 35 undergraduate and 19 graduate programs through five colleges: Arts and Communication, Christos M. Cotsakos College of Business, Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Science and Health. Located on 370 hilltop acres in Wayne, the University enrolls approximately 10,500 students and provides housing for nearly 2,300 students. The institution’s 366 full-time faculty are highly distinguished and diverse scholars and teachers, many of whom are recipients of prestigious awards and grants from the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation.
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www.wpunj.edu
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