An Artful Partnership

~ by Lisa Carter, Vice Provost for Libraries and University Librarian

I am pleased to share the good news that the Libraries recently received a major grant of $500,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation! As I mentioned during our All-Staff meeting on Thursday, February 6, the Libraries partnered with the Chazen Art Museum to submit a proposal for the third round of a grant-making competition that supports collaboration between campus libraries and art museums. This grant program is the result of Mellon’s 2016 Academic Art Museum and Library Summit, which highlighted opportunities for campus libraries and art museums to work together to enhance access to collections and improve the teaching, learning, and research at their universities.  

In addition to the $500,000 from the Mellon Foundation, campus committed an additional $317,000 toward our project. “Coordinating Cultural Heritage Collections at UW-Madison” will extend our digital preservation and discovery infrastructure to help the Chazen manage their digital and digitized materials. The project will create a distinctive search experience for Chazen collections while enabling integrated discovery of their collections in the context of UW Digital Collections.  

To undertake this project, we received funding for a project coordinator and two application developers who will create technical solutions and infrastructure that will scale our ability to support cultural heritage collections across campus. Thanks to Lee Konrad, Bruce Barton, Peter Gorman, Jesse Henderson, Scott Prater, and their colleagues who helped to write the successful proposal and will oversee the Libraries’ contribution to the project. You can read more about the project in the official press release.