April 22, 1998
Contact:
Press Contact: Guy Lamolinara (202) 707-9217
Media Advisory: National Digital Library Competition Winners to Be Announced
Announcements to Be Made During Telephone News Conference
WHEN: Tuesday, April 28, at 2 p.m. EDT; 1 pm. CDT;
12 p.m. MDT; and 11 a.m. PDT.
WHO: James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress
Lana Porter, President, Ameritech Library Services
George Farr, Director of the Division of
Preservation and Access, National Endowment for
the Humanities
WHAT: Announcement of the second round of winners in the
Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital
Library Competition, which enables libraries across
the nation to digitize their collections in
American history and make them available on the
Internet via the Library's site on the World Wide
Web (http://www.loc.gov/).
HOW: A telephone news conference will be held at the
above time. To participate, reporters should call
1-800-749-9805; Host: Lana Porter.
BACKGROUND
A $2 million gift from the Ameritech Foundation
(http://www.ameritech.com) to the Library of Congress is
enabling U.S. institutions to apply for awards to digitize
their unique collections in American history and -- for the
first time -- make them a part of the Library's on-line
collections, called American Memory.
This is the second year of a three-year program
(details of the final competition in 1998-99 will be
announced this summer). The winners are institutions both
large and small from across the United States. Their
collections to be placed on-line represent a diversity of
subjects in American history.
The National Digital Library Program of the Library of
Congress aims to make freely available over the Internet
millions of items by the year 2000, in collaboration with
other institutions. Ameritech's gift helps the Library meet
that goal by providing funds to libraries, museums, archives
and historical societies to aid them in the critical, yet
expensive, task of making their unique collections available
to anyone with access to the World Wide Web.
# # #
PR 98-067
4/22/98
ISSN 0731-3527